Family London travel

BFS11

Hi all -
My family and I are having a two day visit to London next week and I'm really confused by the transport payment and pricing system - We are a family of 5 (Kids are 15,12 and 8) and will be travelling to London each morning by train from Reading, and then navigating the underground system to get around when we get there. 
Some friends (with no children) that have visited recently have told me its easiest to travel around London just using a contactless bank card and tap in and out for each journey - others have told me with a young family its more difficult and I will wrack up a hefty bill by the end of it all. Others have mentioned travel cards, pre-paid cards, others have mentioned family oyster cards -  Ive been told that my youngest would travel free but she needs a photo ID card etc etc .........I'm just really confused by it all to be honest and don't want to end up paying over the odds!
By the looks of the map and the trip planning we have done so far I think we will be using the circle line for most of our journeys if it makes a difference.
Can anyone give some advice for a family of 5 please???
Thanks in advance for your help! 

daveyjp

Registering children for TFL discounted fares is such a faff for a short visit you need to consider if it is worth bothering for the savings.  Each child would need a visitor Oystercard which you apply for and is posted to you, you then need to get the child discount added at a TFL station. And just to confuse matters you can't use visitor Oyster at Reading station, its contactless or paper tickets only and you may wish to use a Railcard between Reading and central London!

https://tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/visiting-london/visitor-oyster-card

If you have enough cards (as its one contactless card per person) It may be easier to use contactless on buses which are cheaper.  Youngest is free, no ID required,

There is a daily cap on charges equivalent to the cost of a day Travelcard.

For short central London trips you also need to weigh up the cost of 5 tube fares against taking a black cab.

strawb_shortcake

We always used to use a travel card which could be purchased from the train station each morning. From memory these were around £25 a day for our family of 5, using a friends and family railcard. 

We did however give up using the tube, the amount of walking underground isn't always hugely different to above ground to get to your destination 

martindow

annabanana82 said:

We always used to use a travel card which could be purchased from the train station each morning. From memory these were around £25 a day for our family of 5, using a friends and family railcard. 

We did however give up using the tube, the amount of walking underground isn't always hugely different to above ground to get to your destination 

It very much depends where you want to go - Paddington to the Tower or the South Bank is a very long walk!

Groupsave tickets are another possibility

https://www.gwr.com/your-tickets/ways-to-save/cheap-tickets/groupsave

I think you can use Groupsave to get  London Travelcards for the journey to London and then unlimited tube and bus travel for the day.  From Reading there is no advantage in buying fares in advance, so I would go in person to the booking office at Reading, say what you would like to do and ask them for the best way of doing it.  I've found them very helpful.  The main ticket office is manned all day, the windows on the Caversham side are not always open, so if you are coming in from there you may have to walk through the tunnel to the town side.

jbuchanangb

With a Friends and Family Railcard the cost of Off Peak Day travel cards for you all together is £55.80. This allows travel on the GWR trains to Paddington (not restricted to Elizabeth Line) and all buses trains tubes in London all day. Same ticket without Railcard would be £103.60. Railcard costs £30. You can buy the Railcard there and then if you haven't got one.

simongregson

You can get an oyster card when you get to london for each child. Once you top it up you need to flag down a member of staff by the ticket machines in the tube station you first go to and they will activate the child visitor discount for the duration of your visit. There can be big queues at the machines at entry points to London. This would give them half price fares. I would bring ID for the 15 year old. If you use public transport a fair bit it would be worth it, but you'd have to weigh up the deposit on the oyster cards cost + faff vs. the savings. The Oyster card can be used again but there isn't a discount post 16 so you might not get to use it again. The 8 year old will travel free anyway when with you. If your 12 and 15 year old have bank cards them tapping these is the most convenient option, but they will pay adult fares. For a few journeys, particularly on buses which are quite cheap in london, this is what we do. Do investigate the buses, you get to see London as you go and they are extremely frequent.

if you have a family railcard you can get the 1/3 discount on day travelcards but these have to be paper ones

MilesT6060842

simongregson said:

You can get an oyster card when you get to london for each child. 

At a cost of £7 per oyster card non refundable, no credit, it may not be worthwhile to get Oyster cards unless the card will be reused a few times (they can be loaned to other people as long as any "discount flagging" on the card is valid for the person who is borrowing the card).

Although they cost more, in this case a paper travelcard ticket is the best balance of options, especially with a family railcard (which may break over or recoup on this one trip depending on how much the train fares are).

simongregson

MilesT6060842 said:

simongregson said:

You can get an oyster card when you get to london for each child. 

At a cost of £7 per oyster card non refundable, no credit, it may not be worthwhile to get Oyster cards unless the card will be reused a few times (they can be loaned to other people as long as any "discount flagging" on the card is valid for the person who is borrowing the card).

Although they cost more, in this case a paper travelcard ticket is the best balance of options, especially with a family railcard (which may break over or recoup on this one trip depending on how much the train fares are).

I hadn't realised the deposit was now £7, used to be £3 and refundable!

It's a pain to get the discount added, as it expires when you tell the staff member you are leaving London and you can only add it at a staffed station, we visit relatives in the suburbs so it can be impossible to add.

I think the contactless card option is the most hassle free, although a travel card might save a bit if a lot of journeys were made the reality is on a London day out you can do a couple of activities. With contactless you don't have to pre-plan.

I'd reiterate to consider the bus, as you can take as many buses as you like in a 60 minute period for one single fare of £1.75 you can really get anywhere for very little cost and get a top deck view of London on the way! There is a daily cap of £5.25 as well so even paying adult fares it isn't going to break the bank.

MilesT6060842

simongregson said:

I think the contactless card option is the most hassle free, although a travel card might save a bit if a lot of journeys were made the reality is on a London day out you can do a couple of activities. With contactless you don't have to pre-plan.

Er, no, contactless does not work well for a family outing, with multiple older children who need to pay. 

You cannot use the same contactless card for more than one person for the same journey (train, tube, bus, tram).  You would need a different contactless bank card for every person travelling, and children will pay the full adult fare.  How many parents have enough different contactless cards to cover every family member?

Paper travelcard (standalone or part of a rail ticket) is the convenient option (if a bit more expensive than contactless pay as you go fares with daily/weekly cap). 

Which is why it is so short sighted that TfL are consulting to withdraw the standalone paper travelcard, and that means it is likely that the bundled rail paper travelcard will also go.

The only other option is to buy multiple contactless reuseable reloadable prepaid travel money debit cards (instead of Oyster), cheapest of which is £10 (last 3 years), one for every traveller who has to pay.  These will work for travel on buses outside of London as well as buying tickets from vending machines across the country.

What is desperately needed for the UK is a country wide reloadable contactless transport card at a reasonable price, similar to what has been available in the Netherlands for 20+ years.

This would not be hard to set up, it could be a "locked down" version of a "scheme" prepaid debit card, similar to the card used by Citymapper to create the "pass" (which was really just a prepaid Mastercard locked down so it would only work with TfL), although that is operationally more expensive than setting up a travel only card based on the ITSO standard (the train operators already use this standard and it will operate the TfL gates and readers on TfL buses if you have the right season ticket).

daveyjp

MilesT6060842 said:

simongregson said:

I think the contactless card option is the most hassle free, although a travel card might save a bit if a lot of journeys were made the reality is on a London day out you can do a couple of activities. With contactless you don't have to pre-plan.

How many parents have enough different contactless cards to cover every family member?

You may be surprised.  We have about 20.

It's simple to double the number of cards by using Apple or Google pay.

simongregson

Our kids have had contactless cards since they had pocket money, so they just use those. The Netherlands is switching to a tap in/out with a debit card model for the whole country as well I believe, no point in having additional bits of plastic to carry around. I suspect that is what will roll out across the UK eventually at least for short journeys where there is no advance fare available.