New to London....confused!!

wanderer

My son is doing an unpaid internship in London this summer. He will be staying in Zone 6 and traveling to Zone 1 (Bank). Is the Oyster card his best option for travel. If so can he buy it from a tube station/ newsagent.

Browntoa

yes, oyster is the cheapest way , any shop with an oyster sign or any station

agrinnall

And tell him to register it so that if he loses it TFL will replace it.

spiro

wanderer wrote: »

My son is doing an unpaid internship in London this summer. He will be staying in Zone 6 and traveling to Zone 1 (Bank). Is the Oyster card his best option for travel. If so can he buy it from a tube station/ newsagent.

Unrelated to your question but it has been on the news today that HMRC are investigating companies that do not pay interns the minimum wage adn they should be paying this unless its only a few days work,

liz545

If he registers his Oyster card he should be able to print out a record of his journeys which he'll need if the employer is refunding travel expenses. The pay as you go fare will be £5 each way, so £10/day. A 1-6 weekly travelcard is £52, so if he's going out at weekends or in the evenings this might be worth a look. The daily price cap is £15 for 1-6, so if he's using PAYG it won't cost more than that.

Cycrow

wouldn't it be £8.90 not £10 ?
as thats the price of the 1-6 travel card.
thats what i pay on my oyster card when i travel to/from zone1-6.

another option might be to cycle, althou prolly not worth buying a bike specifically for it for a short time

wanderer

"Valuable work experience"

cosmojohnson

Cycrow wrote: »

wouldn't it be £8.90 not £10 ?
as thats the price of the 1-6 travel card.
thats what i pay on my oyster card when i travel to/from zone1-6.e

£8.90 is the cost of an off-peak (paper) 1-6 travelcard. You can see all the relevant fares on TfL's site here.

LexyBoy

The Oyster PAYG cap is £15.80 for peak travel, which is presumably what will be required. A single journey between zones 1 and 6 costs £5/£3 (peak/off peak) if done solely by Underground, £5.70/£3.50 if solely on National Rail and £7.20/£4.90 if using a combination.

A period Travelcard will most likely offer the best value unless he will make the whole journey by Tube only and make very few journeys apart from commuting. These cost £55.60 for one week (equivalent to £11.12 per weekday) and £213.60 (equivalent to ~£10.60/day) for one month.If your son will be staying for more than one month, it is possible to buy a Travelcard for the exact period you require at the equivalent monthly rate,which is cheaper than buying e.g. one monthly plus two weeklies – check the price here (enter the stations he’ll be using and you should get a “London Zones 1-6”option). Travelcards are available either on Oyster (from Underground stations) or on paper tickets (from National Rail stations; you'll need a passport sized photo), and have the same price and validity either way. Oyster has the slight advantage that it will automatically charge the extra fare if travelling outside your zones – i.e.into zones 7-10, and it is registered in case of loss. They are valid on rail, tube and DLR within the zones covered, all TfL buses regardless of zone, and the Croydon Tramlink (as long as one of Z3/4/5/6 is included).

Another potential advantage of theTravelcard is that, if making a journey outside of the zones, he will only need a ticket from “Boundary Zone 6” (or alternatively the last station on the routein Zone 6) to the destination, which is valid in conjunction with theTravelcard even on non-stop trains.

The cheapest option, aside from cycling, is to use the bus. This costs a flat fare £1.40 per journey on PAYG, capped at £4.40. A period bus & tram pass is £19.60 weekly or £75.30 monthly. How feasiblethis will be will depend on where he is staying – there are some places even as far out as Z6 where the bus can be quite quick, especially if there’s an express bus, whilst others will be intolerably slow and unreliable.

securityguy

If he has a 16-25 railcard, he can have this added to his Oyster and get a discount on offpeak journeys.