Olympics travelcard

progressive_uk

I have just recieved my Olympics tickets in the post - they also come with an Olympics Travelcard which is valid only on the day of the event. I am travelling to London from Reading on Monday 30 July and all of my travel will be on that day.

According to the Olympics website, it seems that the Olympic Travelcard is valid from Slough and back out to Slough again. Does this mean that I only need to purchase a rail ticket that will get me from Reading to Slough (and back) and that I should be able to rely on the Travelcard to cover the rest of the journey?

wealdroam

I can see how you might think that, but this map seems to be saying that the limit of the Games Travelcard in that direction is West Drayton.

There is however, an exception noted on the map...

Slough
Games ticket holders for Eton Dorney will be able to use their Games Travelcard to travel between London and Slough on the day of the event.

I will assume you are not going to an event at Eton Dorney, in which case that map and accompanying note appear to say that you will need to buy a ticket from Reading to West Drayton and back.

A little bit of ambiguity methinks.

NonGeographicalMan

This is actually a very important question for some of us.

Specifically I live south of the M25 and the furthest out stations covered by the Games Travelcard are Ewell East, Epsom Downs, Chessington South, Tadworth etc. However most of these do not have a decent late evening service. Only Purley, just two miles more drive away than the others has a 24/7 service from London and is in Zone 6. All of the above mean a daily commute by car from my home of 35 miles plus as the extensions fares from my local station to the last Zone 6 station are as much as a return ticket to Central London.

However a close relative of mine lives near to Slough station. So I could live there for a lot of the Olympics and Paralympics and commute from Slough. Rowing does of course also again take place during the Paralympics so the same transport rules will presumably apply.

One suspects that technically you are meant to be going to the rowing at Eton Dorney but if the automatic barriers at Slough have just been programmed to take games travelcards throughout the games then in practice this may not be an issue. Alternatively the barriers may be programmed as normal and they will only let you out and in manually at certain times of day (the rowing and canoeing is all in the morning) in conjunction with seeing a valid rowing or cannoeing ticket. Then again the games travelcard says it is only valid with a ticket to the Olympics so a ticket to any event anywhere on the Games Travelcard network ought to validate it.

At the end of the day if they wanted everyone going to the games to use public transport then it is very poor that they did not do a deal to cover a far larger part of the rail network up to say 70 miles out of London as all of this distance is clearly commutable to London depending on the speed of local rail services. Certainly they should have at least covered ordinary commuter stations up to 50 miles out of London.

There is a lot of hype from London 2012 and the railway companies to say they are running trains an hour later but when you actually to check in to it for me in Surrey the only line that has later trains is the one running to Surbiton. However Slough has 24 hour a day services anyway to London except on Saturday night to Sunday morning.

I don't think anyone has thought this through properly and when you take in to account income and free time issues (i.e. retired people will have more time to go) a very large number of ganes spectators are going to come from commuter land outside the M25.

laird

You would need a ticket from your station to Boundary Zone U6 rather than to a station within the Undergound Zones which can be cheaper although a ticket to a station within the six zones will be fine.
If you buy that from Slough it should be fine, reading above it sounds like it wasn't the intent to extend the Zone coverage to Slough.

MrMonkey

The Travelcard covers zones1-9, so as long as you can get to one of those stations under your own steam, the rest of your travel would be covered.

I have a question about the Travelcard. I bought some tickets today and had the option to get them emailed to me, which I did to save the £6 postage fee. How do I get my travelcard? Naturally, I will need it to get to the venue within London and there is no mention of it in the email I received.

Thanks in advance.

dzug1

From Slough if you didn't want to pay the extension fare to West Drayton or BZ6, then the 81 bus (and only the 81) is included in the travelcard and will take you into the zones - Hounslow West is the first tube station it reaches.

On the slow side though. And I'm assuming it's running normally during the Olympics

dzug1

MrMonkey wrote: »

The Travelcard covers zones1-9, so as long as you can get to one of those stations under your own steam, the rest of your travel would be covered.

I have a question about the Travelcard. I bought some tickets today and had the option to get them emailed to me, which I did to save the £6 postage fee. How do I get my travelcard? Naturally, I will need it to get to the venue within London and there is no mention of it in the email I received.

Thanks in advance.

Is this a vanilla travelcard or specifically an Olympics one? The former I would think you pick it up from a machine at a rail station using the reference in the e-mail and the card you paid with. If the latter - no idea.

NonGeographicalMan

MrMonkey wrote: »

The Travelcard covers zones1-9, so as long as you can get to one of those stations under your own steam, the rest of your travel would be covered.

That is a totally and utterly unhelpful reply which quite clearly failed to read my post in any shape or form.

Zones 7 to 9 only exist on the tube on the Metropolitan line to Amersham and none of the stops in Zones 7 to 9 serve an Olympic venue. So Zones 7 to 9 only advantage people lucky enough to live on the far flung reaches of the Met line and wanting to travel to the Games even though those of us who live in Southern Railway's area cannot use a station the same distance out of London like Dorking using our 9 Zone Travelcard because the zones stop at Zone 6 at Ewell East and Ewell West on the Southern Railway network.

NonGeographicalMan

dzug1 wrote: »

From Slough if you didn't want to pay the extension fare to West Drayton or BZ6, then the 81 bus (and only the 81) is included in the travelcard and will take you into the zones - Hounslow West is the first tube station it reaches.

If the 81 bus is included in the Travelcard it is only for the same reason as rail services to Slough are included. Namely it is nominally for the purpose of reaching the rowing at Eton Dorney using the courtesy buses from Slough station. So if you are going in towards London at 9am in the morning you may well meet an objection, especially as these cards will be driver and not machine checked on a bus.

So this still doesn't cover whether or not journeys to and from Slough are in fact allowed by rail or on the 81 bus 24/7 during the games period. I suspect in practice they are covered but the Games organisers don't want to make a feature of this so as to avoid upsetting people who live outside Zones 1 to 6 and not near a railway station serving a Games venue.

Its a bit like Ground Admission on the gate after 5pm or ticket resale from Centre Court during Olympic Wimbledon. Apparenly this is going to happen as in normal Wimbledons but information is being withheld until the last moment by London 2012 so as not to put people off buying the expensive full price tickets for Centre Court and No 1 Court.

NonGeographicalMan

dzug1 wrote: »

Is this a vanilla travelcard or specifically an Olympics one? The former I would think you pick it up from a machine at a rail station using the reference in the e-mail and the card you paid with. If the latter - no idea.

If you don't know what you are talking about then surely there is no point in providing an answer in the thread? Games Travelcards are physical ones mailed to you with the tickets and with the restriction on them that you must also hold a valid Games ticket on the day you use them.

The Czech official reseller had no trouble at all sending me my Travelcard entitlement for the tickets I bought but London 2012 itself is so incompetent they failed to include them with the tickets that they sent me.

wealdroam

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

If the 81 bus is included in the Travelcard it is only for the same reason as rail services to Slough are included. Namely it is nominally for the purpose of reaching the rowing at Eton Dorney using the courtesy buses from Slough station. So if you are going in towards London at 9am in the morning you may well meet an objection, especially as these cards will be driver and not machine checked on a bus.

So this still doesn't cover whether or not journeys to and from Slough are in fact allowed by rail or on the 81 bus 24/7 during the games period. I suspect in practice they are covered but the Games organisers don't want to make a feature of this so as to avoid upsetting people who live outside Zones 1 to 6 and not near a railway station serving a Games venue.

No, you have got it wrong.

A Travelcard is valid on the 81 bus to Slough at all times of the year.

The use of the 81 bus is not confined to any Olympic issue.

In other words, your travecard, or indeed any travelcard for any zones, is valid on the 81 bus between Slough and Hounslow West and of course further towards central London.