Help me understand how the Oyster card is supposed to save me money

SiD the Turtle

SiD the Turtle

SiD the Turtle

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Consider an example journey, from the lovely land of Slough to London including an all zone travelcard.

- A normal day return (rush hour timed for maximum cost) including zones 1-6 would be £17.50.
- This without the travelcard would be 12.50.

Therefore the cost of the 1-6 travelcard is £5.

- The capping fare for an Oyster in zones 1-6 is £12.70. If you were zone 1 only that drops to £6.70, which is still more than the paper ticket. If you wait half an hour and don't travel in the morning rush hour the cost of the travelcard bit on a paper ticket is about a pound.

Why on earth would I buy an Oyster card?
 
Hmm if I was a London-er who needed to only use the tube I could get a ticket from Ealing Broadway to Kings Cross for £6.70 which would include a zones 1-6 travelcard at a much reduced cost - unless of course I was only doing one or two journeys.

It doesn't make any sense I tells ya!
 
sr4470 said:
You're using rail, which is where the Oyster is almost useless, except on select routes (eg Richmond to Woolwich).
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Yup, you can only use oyster on the train if it's a monthly or weekly travel card and you are within Zones 1-6, or on certain selected routes, usually those which use the same stations / lines as the underground, like Farringdon station.

It should be written into the rail franchises that they have to use oyster if they are terminating in London.
 
SiD the Turtle said:
Hmm if I was a London-er who needed to only use the tube I could get a ticket from Ealing Broadway to Kings Cross for £6.70 which would include a zones 1-6 travelcard at a much reduced cost - unless of course I was only doing one or two journeys.

It doesn't make any sense I tells ya!
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Oyster is cheaper for each journey than a paper ticket and the total it will cost you for the day is capped at the travel card price.

If you are only using TFL governed transport then oyster will never be more expensive than a paper ticket.
 
I understand that you can only use Oyster when you're using a TFL facility of some kind (tube station, bus etc) but my confusion is this:

On the face of it an Oyster card is much cheaper than the cash fare. So as someone who pops into London on an off I was considering getting a payg Oyster to save me some money (and the hassle of feeding the ticket into the barriers). But there is zero incentive to do this when the train companies massively undercut them (shame they don't do the same for the actual train journey :P ). Coupled with the fact that I have a young person's travel card (<25) the cost of adding zones 1-6 to my ticket is pennies.
 
It will save money until everyone finally switches to it and they put the prices up to more than they currently are. You'll see once there's only one way of traveling, it will increase big time as you'll have to pay or no travel.
 
There isn't really any confusion. Like for like oyster is cheaper then cash; the train / tfl travel card tickets are a bundled product and are a completely different kettle of fish.
 
v1bez said:
It will save money until everyone finally switches to it and they put the prices up to more than they currently are. You'll see once there's only one way of traveling, it will increase big time as you'll have to pay or no travel.
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Good grief, how absurdly paranoid.
 
ArmyofHarmony said:
Is there an unlimited pass that lets you use the tubes an unlimited amount of times within a time period you select?


If i move to london, I want one of those
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You want a travelcard, that's what they're for.
 
SiD the Turtle said:
But there is zero incentive to do this when the train companies massively undercut them
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This completely depends on the journey you're trying to make. From Billericay at peak times, with a young person's railcard, a return to London is £10.70, a peak travelcard (from One) is £23.20. Much cheaper to buy a travelcard once in London, and even cheaper just to spend a £3 return on an Oyster card. At the weekend (or if I can arrive after 10) it's £8.90 for the travelcard or £6.95 (I think) for the return, so hardly anything in it when I just need a zone 1 return.

As for "why it's cheaper to have an Oyster card" - a "cash" single is £4, on Oyster it's £1.50. For loads of journeys it works out massively cheaper. There are a few times, especially with a railcard (which aren't valid on tube tickets) that other ticket types are cheaper, as you've already noted.
 
Also if you were to buy a travelcard for zones 1 - 4 it costs you around £4.80 or something similar. Yet if you use Oyster only in zones 1 - 4 it accumulates the cost of all the single journeys you have made up until you have done enough to make that travelcard, except the cost of the zone 1 - 4 travelcard on Oyster is £4.30 which saves you 50p for that days travelling.

In essence it is far cheaper and easier using Oyster since it calculates your actual usage and doesn't go above the equivalent travel card you would've otherwise had to buy.
 
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