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How To Travel In London Cheaply!
Added: (Sun Aug 17 2008)
Forget the horror stories of a single trip in London being £4 - only idiots pay that!
The Oyster card is an absolute must if you want to save money in London.
In fact, it’s the best £3 you can spend if you wish to save money in London!
And it gets better!
When you leave London, you can claim the £3 back - or just pass the card - and any balance - to a friend, or save it for your next visit.
Here’s how it works:
You “buy” the card for £3 - you can buy it from any tube station, from machines or from any of over 2,200 Oyster Ticket Shops. Some airlines also sell them on your flight to London!
Each card carries a unique number in a hidden chip.
So, whether you’re arriving at Heathrow or Kings Cross - or anywhere in London - your first stop is to buy a card.
You then add money to it at one of the machines or at the ticket office of any tube station - you can pay by cash or credit card.
Suppose you add £10. You can now make £10 worth of journeys.
But here’s the best part - your journeys are not only much cheaper, but there is a maximum charge per day, so if you travel a lot (and you will want to at these prices!) they are exceptional value.
Here’s some examples:
Bus cash fare for 1 single journey: £2.00
Oyster fare for same journey - only 90p is deducted from your card - you’ve already saved over 50% - on just 1 journey.
But it gets better - any days in which you make “bus only” journeys (from 4.30 one morning to 4.30 the next morning), you’ll only pay £3 - and that’s for as many journeys as you wish - you’ll never be charged more than £3 in total!
Central London Tube (Underground Railway) single fare: £4
Same Journey with an Oyster Card £1.50 - again, you save over half - and no queuing up to buy tickets, no worrying about what the fare is.
But, again it gets better! If you are travelling on the tubes (and, if you wish, the buses) you only pay a maximum of £4.80 to travel all day in zones 1 and 2 - which cover almost all of the tourist sites. Going further, only a few pennies extra are debited.
You can see why more than 98% of tube journeys are now made by Oyster!