Tap in, tap out, let the daily cap do the sums and never stand on the left: a first-timer’s guide to getting around
How to Pay for London Transport Without Buying a Single Ticket
Every day at the big London stations you can watch the same small tragedy. A family, fresh off a long flight, stands at a ticket machine working through its screens with rising despair. Behind them a queue forms. Eventually they buy a set of paper tickets that cost more than they should and that they will lose before lunch. Meanwhile, a few feet away, Londoners stream through the gates touching a bank card on a yellow pad without breaking stride.
The single most useful thing I can tell a visitor is this: you almost certainly do not need to buy a ticket. The system is designed so that you can simply pay as you go, and it will work out the cheapest fare for you. Here is how to use it like someone who lives here.
Contactless Is the Answer
If you have a contactless bank card, or a phone or watch set up to pay, you can use it directly on the Underground, buses, trams, the Docklands Light Railway, the Overground, the Elizabeth line and most National Rail trains within the London zones. Touch it on the yellow reader at the gate when you enter and again when you leave. On buses and trams you touch once when boarding and that is all.
Two rules matter. First, each person needs their own card or device. You cannot pay for a companion by tapping twice. Second, use the same card or device for every journey in a day, because the system adds up your travel on that one card. If you tap in with your phone and out with the plastic card, it sees two unfinished journeys and charges you the maximum for both.
Cards issued abroad generally work, though your bank may add a foreign transaction fee to each day’s total. If that worries you, or if you have no contactless card, buy an Oyster card at any Tube station. It is a plastic smartcard that you load with credit and use in exactly the same way, for a small one-off fee.
The Cap Is Your Friend
This is the clever part. However many journeys you make, there is a limit to what you will be charged in a single day, set according to the zones you travel through. Once you reach it, the rest of that day’s travel costs nothing extra. There is a weekly limit as well for contactless users, running from Monday to Sunday.
That is why day travelcards and tourist passes are seldom worth buying now. The cap does the same job automatically and usually for less. Fares and caps change every year, so I will not quote figures that may be out of date by the time you read this. The current tables are on the Transport for London website, along with a single fare finder that will price any journey.
Zones in One Paragraph
London is divided into numbered rings. Zone 1 is the centre, where nearly all the famous sights are. Zone 2 surrounds it and holds a great many hotels and pleasant neighbourhoods. Heathrow is out in zone 6. Most visitors spend their whole stay in zones 1 and 2 and need think no further about it.
Take the Bus
Visitors neglect the buses, and they should not. A bus journey costs a single flat fare however far you go, and it is much cheaper than the Tube. The hopper fare lets you change onto as many other buses or trams as you like within an hour of first touching in, at no further charge. Buses do not accept cash at all, so you must have a card or Oyster.
The front seat on the top deck of a double-decker is the best cheap sightseeing in the city. Several ordinary routes pass a procession of landmarks for the price of a standard fare. Ask at your hotel which one runs nearest, sit upstairs and enjoy the view while the open-top tour buses charge many times more for the same streets.
Children
Children under eleven travel free on buses and trams, and free on the Tube and several other services when accompanied by a paying adult, up to a set number per adult. Older children can have a discount applied to an Oyster card by station staff, which is well worth the five minutes it takes. Ask at the ticket hall when you arrive.
From the Airport
From Heathrow there are three rail choices to the centre. The Piccadilly line of the Underground is the cheapest and slowest, taking the better part of an hour. The Elizabeth line is faster, air-conditioned and has more room for luggage, and it runs straight through the West End and the City. The Heathrow Express is the quickest, reaching Paddington in about fifteen minutes, and by some distance the most expensive unless booked well ahead. All can be paid for by contactless.
From Gatwick, the ordinary Thameslink and Southern trains are nearly as quick as the branded express and cost less. Stansted and Luton have their own rail and coach links. A black cab from Heathrow to central London is comfortable and eye-wateringly dear. I would keep it for emergencies and expense accounts.
Manners Underground
A few customs will save you from the wrath of commuters. On escalators, stand on the right and walk on the left. This is the nearest thing London has to a sacred law. Let passengers off the train before you get on. Move down inside the carriage. Have your card in your hand before you reach the gate, not at the bottom of a rucksack. And between about half past seven and half past nine in the morning, and five and seven in the evening, the Tube is very crowded indeed. If you can travel outside those hours, it is both cheaper and kinder to your nerves.
Walk More Than You Think
The Tube map is a diagram, not a map, and it distorts distance wildly. Some stations that look far apart are a few minutes’ walk from one another. Leicester Square to Covent Garden is the famous example: the journey by train takes longer than doing it on foot. Central London is compact and flat, and much of its charm lies in the streets between the sights. Before you descend the escalator, check a walking map. You may be nearly there.
For planning the rest of your trip, the official tourism site Visit London is dependable, and Londonist is excellent on transport quirks and news. Visa and entry requirements are set out on GOV.UK. And if a fellow passenger says something you cannot follow, the guide to Cockney rhyming slang may help. The Tube also features regularly in the capital’s comic press, as the London satirical news pages show; a visitor unsure whether a headline about the Underground is serious should use this UK checklist for telling satire from real news. More of my practical guides are on my author page at The London Prat.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
