Tube and bus fares rise in London: from bh
#23
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 5,271
Neopatrick...
One of the advantages of going to England is that it is very likely the clerk in the booking office will understand your language (I assume you're North American) - BTW this is meant to be humor and not sarcasm so please take it in that vein and don't think I'm trying to be a know it all or sarcastic.
Anyway...an oyster card can hold up to 2 travelcards (travelcards being defined as 7 days or 1 month or other periods) and one PAYG account. You can absolutely tell the clerk upon arrival at Heathrow that you want the 7 day pass to start the next day and at the same time add funds to the PAYG account. When you touch in, if you choose to have the 7 day period start the next day, the reads looks first for a valid travelcard...well you'll be in zone 6 so you won't have a valid travelcard in any event but it notes you have touched in at a zone 6 station...when you arrive at Convent Garden you touch out...at that point the reads asks itself first if you have a valid travelcard....if you have decided to start the 7 day travelcard the next day, the answer will be no..it then deducts the appropriate fare from the PAYG account also calculating if you have met the cap for the day...in this case it would see you don't have a valid 7 day travelcard on that day so it would deduct £2 from PAYG..OTOH if you had decided to start the 7 day period on that day, the reader would not you have a valid zone 1 & 2 travelcard but would calculate you owe in this case £1 for the extension from zone 3 to zone 6 and deduct that amount from the PAYG account...it's as simple as that...it's all beein programmed in and you don't have to worry about it...what you do have to decide is which way you want to do it...you can tell them when you want the 7 day travelcard to start and it is very likely the booking clerk will understand just what you want...
Just do the math the current price for a zone 1 & 2 travelcard is £23.20...we have explained the extension fares so armed with the proper information, you can decide what's best for you.
Bear in mind, that if on a day or two you won't be using much public transportation, it might be to your advantage to go solely with PAYG (I know there is a 3 quid deposit but it is refundable)...as I said in another thread I always used the 7 day travelcard (of course there was a time not too long ago where for £13 you could buy a 7 day pass for zone 1 only which would be sufficient for my purposes but the zone 1 no longer exists unfortunately)...single tube fares on oyster are £1.50 in zone 1 (vs. £4 for cash quite a difference eh) and single bus fares on oyster are £1 as opposed to £2 for cash. Oyster cards cap at 50p below the price of a one day travelcard if you use the tube at all which is £4.60 right now and if you only use the buses then it caps at £3...as noted the £4.60 price only applies if you don't start using the system before 0930 on weekdays.
It really isn't complicated if you just sit down and do the math...just remember there are no 1 day or 3 day travelcards available on oyster,,,the 3 day is not particularly a good buy anyway (it's all considered peak) and you don't have to worry about queing each week morning at 0930 to buy your 1 day travelcard which will be £5.10 and then perhaps something will happen and you will not do as much public transporting and more walking than you thought...it used to happen to me regularly I would start out with every intention of doing a couple of trips on the tube, a bus ride or two and so I would buy a 1 day travelcard and lo and behold I would end up just making 1 return trip on the tube (admitedly the cash fare at the time was not as oppresive as it is today) but with oyster, no decisions to make each morning...if you have a 7 day pass of course no decisons at all if you're going PAYG you have a portable booking office in your pocket and whatever happens happens...so on a day you fully intended to do three or four trips on the tube and bus but you end up just taking a couple of bus rids...no problem...it's £2 for the 2 bus rides...you take a third bus ride now it's £3...you take a fourth bus ride it's still £3 as you have reached the cap and the great computer in the sky has done all the figuring for you.
It really is neat and not all that complicated...I just don't understand people who are intimidated by it...the whole system is geared to make it as easy as possible to get the most economical (a laughable term given the exchange rate between GBP and USD or CAD or AUD) and really once you get used to it and it should take perhaps 5 minutes, you will really appreciate how neat the system is.
And besides with your very own oyster card, you will feel like a real Londoner and if you return, you'll have a headstart as you can put whatever you want on a card without talking to one of the friendly London underground clerks...simply touch the reader on one of the machines and you can top up PAYG or buy a 7 day pass, put your credit card in the machine and voila done...touch the reader and you will see how much is left on the card and can even look at a play by play account how the monies were deducted.
Hope that makes it clear, hope you had fun working with my humor and if there is anything you need further clarification on, just holler.
One of the advantages of going to England is that it is very likely the clerk in the booking office will understand your language (I assume you're North American) - BTW this is meant to be humor and not sarcasm so please take it in that vein and don't think I'm trying to be a know it all or sarcastic.
Anyway...an oyster card can hold up to 2 travelcards (travelcards being defined as 7 days or 1 month or other periods) and one PAYG account. You can absolutely tell the clerk upon arrival at Heathrow that you want the 7 day pass to start the next day and at the same time add funds to the PAYG account. When you touch in, if you choose to have the 7 day period start the next day, the reads looks first for a valid travelcard...well you'll be in zone 6 so you won't have a valid travelcard in any event but it notes you have touched in at a zone 6 station...when you arrive at Convent Garden you touch out...at that point the reads asks itself first if you have a valid travelcard....if you have decided to start the 7 day travelcard the next day, the answer will be no..it then deducts the appropriate fare from the PAYG account also calculating if you have met the cap for the day...in this case it would see you don't have a valid 7 day travelcard on that day so it would deduct £2 from PAYG..OTOH if you had decided to start the 7 day period on that day, the reader would not you have a valid zone 1 & 2 travelcard but would calculate you owe in this case £1 for the extension from zone 3 to zone 6 and deduct that amount from the PAYG account...it's as simple as that...it's all beein programmed in and you don't have to worry about it...what you do have to decide is which way you want to do it...you can tell them when you want the 7 day travelcard to start and it is very likely the booking clerk will understand just what you want...
Just do the math the current price for a zone 1 & 2 travelcard is £23.20...we have explained the extension fares so armed with the proper information, you can decide what's best for you.
Bear in mind, that if on a day or two you won't be using much public transportation, it might be to your advantage to go solely with PAYG (I know there is a 3 quid deposit but it is refundable)...as I said in another thread I always used the 7 day travelcard (of course there was a time not too long ago where for £13 you could buy a 7 day pass for zone 1 only which would be sufficient for my purposes but the zone 1 no longer exists unfortunately)...single tube fares on oyster are £1.50 in zone 1 (vs. £4 for cash quite a difference eh) and single bus fares on oyster are £1 as opposed to £2 for cash. Oyster cards cap at 50p below the price of a one day travelcard if you use the tube at all which is £4.60 right now and if you only use the buses then it caps at £3...as noted the £4.60 price only applies if you don't start using the system before 0930 on weekdays.
It really isn't complicated if you just sit down and do the math...just remember there are no 1 day or 3 day travelcards available on oyster,,,the 3 day is not particularly a good buy anyway (it's all considered peak) and you don't have to worry about queing each week morning at 0930 to buy your 1 day travelcard which will be £5.10 and then perhaps something will happen and you will not do as much public transporting and more walking than you thought...it used to happen to me regularly I would start out with every intention of doing a couple of trips on the tube, a bus ride or two and so I would buy a 1 day travelcard and lo and behold I would end up just making 1 return trip on the tube (admitedly the cash fare at the time was not as oppresive as it is today) but with oyster, no decisions to make each morning...if you have a 7 day pass of course no decisons at all if you're going PAYG you have a portable booking office in your pocket and whatever happens happens...so on a day you fully intended to do three or four trips on the tube and bus but you end up just taking a couple of bus rids...no problem...it's £2 for the 2 bus rides...you take a third bus ride now it's £3...you take a fourth bus ride it's still £3 as you have reached the cap and the great computer in the sky has done all the figuring for you.
It really is neat and not all that complicated...I just don't understand people who are intimidated by it...the whole system is geared to make it as easy as possible to get the most economical (a laughable term given the exchange rate between GBP and USD or CAD or AUD) and really once you get used to it and it should take perhaps 5 minutes, you will really appreciate how neat the system is.
And besides with your very own oyster card, you will feel like a real Londoner and if you return, you'll have a headstart as you can put whatever you want on a card without talking to one of the friendly London underground clerks...simply touch the reader on one of the machines and you can top up PAYG or buy a 7 day pass, put your credit card in the machine and voila done...touch the reader and you will see how much is left on the card and can even look at a play by play account how the monies were deducted.
Hope that makes it clear, hope you had fun working with my humor and if there is anything you need further clarification on, just holler.
#24
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 2,472
The beauty of the oyster is its ease to use. IMO, it's not worth getting all wrapped up in every the last penny of the thing, at least as a tourist. Once I pay my plane fare, the extra pound or two difference I might or might not pay for the tube really doesn't matter so much, but the simplicity of buying the card once and never really worrying about it thereafter makes for a smooth trip. When you get right down to it, the difference that you're talking about is about what you'd pay if you decide to buy a latte at the airport or at the corner Starbucks (any corner).
