London - Best Underground-Rail-Bus Card To Buy Per Week/month

[dieseldick]

i have been offered another job in central london, im at an end wether to take the work or not, why ? because i am trying to figure out the costs of travelling to and from various workplaces within london and maybe sometimes sites just outside london.

bearing in mind i might also bring my car to london, what is the best ticket to get to travel twice daily on undergraound in london. maybe sometimes i will get a bus if it is quicker or the tube does not take me nearer to my workplace.

please provide me with any links or the best ticket to buy weekly or monthly within london. ive been one website but its confusing .

thanks

[dieseldick]

i will probably need a monthly season ticket to travel at peak times to and fro from work.

[ummmm]

Have you checked out the Oyster card?

[dieseldick]

will check that , thanks.

[Buenchico]

For regular travel within London (including the morning peak-fare period) you might need to get an Oystercard AND to put a weekly or monthly Travelcard onto it, rather than using your Oystercard on a 'pay as you go' basis (as you probably would if you were a tourist travelling only at off-peak times). You can also buy both annual and 'odd period' Travelcards.

For example, if you lived in Zone 3 but worked in Zone 1 (travelling there on the Underground) the fares are as follows:

Cash: 2 x £4.80 = £9.60 per day.

Oystercard (using pay-as-you-go): £3.30 to work during peak time + £2.80 to get home off-peak = £6.10 per day.

Oystercard + Weekly Travelcard = £37.70 per week. (Equivalent to £7.54 per day, based upon a 5 day week - but see below).

Oystercard + Monthly Travelcard = £144.80 per week. (Equivalent to £6.90 per day, based upon 21 working days in the month - but, again, see below).

It might seem that using a pay-as-you-go Oystercard is cheapest but any additional travel (such as buses) will be charged for. However, as long as you stay within the inner 3 zones your total payment can't exceed £7.50 per day.

Using the weekly or monthly Travelcards includes unlimited additional travel within Zones 1 to 3 AND (importantly) includes weekend travel as well, so they may well work out cheapest overall.

Map of travel zones:
http://www.emta.com/IMG/pdf/travel_card_zones.pdf
(You'll probably need to hit the 'zoom' button a few times to see the detail.

Fares:
https://tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/tube-dlr-lo-adult-fares.pdf

[Buenchico]

PS: On re-reading your post I see that you might be travelling to different places each day. You'd need to consider whether it was best to buy a 9-zone Travelcard or to use a more restricted one and pay the extra for travel outside of your chosen zones. (You can BOTH pay-as-you-go credit AND a weekly or monthly Travelcard on an Oystercard, enabling you to do exactly that).

Alternatively you could just stick to using your Oystercard on a pay-as-you-go basis or, probably better, using a contactless debit card instead. (That's because there's a weekly capping feature applied to payments by contactless debit cards that isn't applied to Oystercard; see my 2nd link above).

Confused?
Join ten million Londoners then!

;-)

[dieseldick]

thankyou.
im getting job offers left right and centre in london, ive had 3 today allready . this latest job is in pentonville road near new cross underground.

i see there are lots of decent rooms for around £130 - £150 per week in stratford area, so my question is this.

is it worth my while bringing my car down with me ? if i were working in central london which is highly unlikely would there be parking ? maybe for employess ? but basically i do not think london would have a lot of parking spaces per day and if so the prices would be sky high i imagine, its been years from i was in london working but i usually stayed outside in wembley or somewhere then got a tube into central , i think this is the way to go regarding travelling in london, yes ?

[Buenchico]

Taking a car to London would seem like madness to me (unless, say, like a painter and decorator, you'd need it to carry the tools of your trade around).

Street parking is almost non-existent in many parts of London and car parks charge a fortune. Traffic within central London moves at the same speed now as it did in the days of horse-drawn cabs. Plus, if your journeys take you into this area
https://tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/congestion-charge-zone-map.pdf
between 0700 and 1800 (Mon-Fri) you'll have to pay £11.50 per day Congestion Charge.

Stratford to New Cross is about 8 miles and might take you 25 minutes if traffic is running freely into, and through, the Blackwall Tunnel. However it can take over an hour when there's just a minor bump between two vehicles somewhere along your route. Using the Jubilee Line and the London Overground (changing at Canada Water) typically takes 22 minutes from Stratford Station to New Cross Station.

[Canary42]

///Taking a car to London would seem like madness to me ... ... parking is almost non-existent in many parts of London and car parks charge a fortune. ///

Some years ago I had a job in Fulham at a site fortunate to have its own car park. This was actually quite frustrating in a way because commuting into London (from Staines) was such a painful and slow exercise. A friend of mine from work used to jog home to St Margarets most evenings and would often overtake me several times !

[Buenchico]

PS: Stratford is in Zone 2. New Cross is in Zone 3. So a 7-day Travelcard would cost you £24.10. Using an Oystercard with pay-as-you-go credit (or a contactless debit card) would cost you £16.00 for a 5-day week including peak-time morning travel. You could easily pay more than that for parking for a single day!

[dieseldick]

thanks for your help. i think working in london may not be as good as it seems. digs are around 200 per week for a decent room or standard to what i am used to. i would only take my car to go see friends who live in kent on my day off. plus if i went to another job say in portsmouth then car would be handy to keep all my clothes and tools etc in.