Oyster 7 days v 7 day travelcard

blossomhill_2

Despite reading the tfl website I can't for the life of me see the differece between using an Oystercard for 7 days travel in London (zones 1-2) and loading a 7-day travelcard onto Oyster

Can anyone explain to me in words of one sylable please, so I can work out which would be cheapest?
Thank you

thelawnet

Tube fares here:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14416.aspx

Essentially each Zone 1 or Zone 1 -2 journey will cost around £2.10, and a Zone 2 journey will cost £1.50.

There's a daily maximum of £7.30 on weekends or if you start travelling after 9:30am. If you start before 9:30am on a weekday, the cap is £8.80.

So for 7 days, you could pay a maximum of £7.30 * 2 + £8.80 * 5 = £58.60, and a minimum of the cost of the actual journeys taken. With 4 journeys per day you'd be coming up near the cap.

With a weekly travelcard you pay £30.40 for a week's zone 1-2 unlimited any time of day, and no per journey charge.

If you're going to average more than two journeys by tube per day then the weekly travelcard will work out cheaper.

It's the same plastic card either way, just with one you ask them to load the travelcard with the other you load PAYG credit.

If you want buses, they cost £1.40 each journey using PAYG, included with a weekly travelcard. If you don't want the tube at all, there's some extra complexity with the way bus fares are calculated, but this probably isn't relevant so I will ignore it.

alanrowell

You can have both PAYG & Travelcard on the same Oystercard. This allows you to have a Travelcard for the central zones 1-2 but also to travel to places outside those zones - eg Hampton Court, Heathrow Airport. The computers work it all out and you can reclaim any unused cash (but not Travelcards) when you hand the Oystercard back

However there are Travelcards issued by National Rail ticket offices which are eligible for the offers on daysoutguide.com

Whilst these are intended for people travelling by train with "normal" train tickets, a Travelcard bought at a NR office also allows use of the offers whereas a Travelcard bought elsewhere isn't.