10 ms·

> One-trip tickets on the Tube were surprisingly expensive, £4.90. This is likely a form of price discrimination for tourists, as the cost for the Oyster and Co

• n4r9 8y ago
  It's a bit of both I reckon. Even a lot of non-London Brits don't realise how easy it is to get an oyster card in the station, and very few know that you can just use contactless payments.
  • sefrost 8y ago
    More than 50% of pay-as-you-go journeys are made with contactless as of April 2018, so I don't think "very few know" is fair (fare, heh). http://content.tfl.gov.uk/contactless-top-line-figure.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/contactless-top-line-figure.pdf
    • setquk 8y ago
      It's mainly regular Londoners who use contactless I think. We're an extremely advanced city when it comes to public transport payments. But at the same time you need to be able to digest the numerous rules around it like daily and weekly caps etc. I've got so used to this that a few months ago I did a bus journey in a medium sized town and it felt totally backwards having a physical ticket.
      • alias_neo 8y ago
        I went out east to lakeside one day to do some shopping with my wife; we got as far as Dartford, then there was a bus we had to get, I tapped my Oyster on the reader, it didn't work, the driver gave me an odd look, so I tapped my bank card, it didn't work, another odd look, so I said, "it's not working, do you take cards?" He looked at me as if it'd just offended his mother. "No" the driver replied. So I asked "What do you take?" And he replied "Cash". I was slightly taken aback. This bus station is in the middle of nowhere just past Dartford, there isn't a building in sight let alone a cash machine, so, I looked in my wallet to find only my single, brand new, plastic £5 note with a palindrome serial number I'd been keeping. With a sigh I handed it over and we got our bus. Lakeside was crap.
        • setquk 8y ago
          That's exactly the problem. You pass an invisible line somewhere that TfL stops existing and you're getting mugged straight up in redneck country. Lakeside is indeed crap.
        • dazc 8y ago
          Outside of central London a lot of bus companies either have their own card system or none at all, of course the card for one company rarely works with others.
        • denverbroncos 8y ago
          you could go Fenchurch st to chafford hundred and walk over the pedestrian bridge for I believe £5.90 return. maybe not ideal for your circumstances but food for thought
      • jdietrich 8y ago
        I use contactless when I travel to London - as a visitor, it's far more convenient than buying an Oyster and far cheaper than paper tickets. >But at the same time you need to be able to digest the numerous rules around it like daily and weekly caps etc. The price caps are quite easy to understand - you just tap your card when you travel and you'll always be charged the lowest applicable fare. You don't have to think about whether you need to buy a daily or weekly ticket, because you'll never be charged more than the daily or weekly fare cap.
        • n4r9 8y ago
          > You don't have to think about whether you need to buy a daily or weekly ticket If you're not wealthy, it's certainly worth knowing whether or not you've reached a cap.
        • setquk 8y ago
          The price caps are but it's a bit of a pain if you forget to touch out somewhere or have to use national rail etc. Plus sometimes it does actually go wrong. I have to request about 2-3 refunds a year where I've done the same route and not forgotten a thing.
• robjan 8y ago
  I think it's because they have to maintain ticket machines for the people who choose to buy single tickets rather than use their Oyster/Contactless. It means maintaining the legacy ticket infrastructure which is less efficient and more time consuming. Anyone can get an Oyster card at a vending machine and most people in the developed world have a contactless payment card.
  • setquk 8y ago
    Despite using contactless via Apple Pay, I don't actually have a contactless debit card. HSBC never issue me them even though I asked! I'm not sure contactless is as ubiquitous as we think it is.
    • hardlianotion 8y ago
      May not be, but my local coffee shop in suburban Brockley no longer takes cash, which seems a pretty strong signal to me.
    • laurencerowe 8y ago
      My HSBC UK Visa debit card has had contactless support for at least five years. Perhaps just report it lost to get a new one issued. Even my US debit and credit cards have it now (with the exception of a metallic Amazon Prime card.)
      • setquk 8y ago
        I’ve lost it twice. Still no contactless :(
• raverbashing 8y ago
  People should just buy the Oyster, problem solved and it's cheaper unless you're making only one or two trips
  • lozenge 8y ago
    You can get an Oyster refund from machines in almost every station now. It's cheaper even for a single trip.
  • IneffablePigeon 8y ago
    At this point contactless has enough consumer adoption to be the easier option. If you're a tourist and don't have a contactless card you can use Google pay etc.
    • alehander42 8y ago
      however, you are (maybe) being more anonymous, if you use a normal oyster(if you haven't added personal info to it)
    • niccolop 8y ago
      And Apple Pay.
  • chrisseaton 8y ago
    Why use Oyster over contactless? I don’t want to carry yet another card.
    • Symbiote 8y ago
      The only reason would be for regular visitors who don't have British bank cards, but do pay an unreasonable transaction fee to their bank for foreign purchases. TFL gather together all journeys made per day, so no matter how many journeys are made with the same contactless card there will be one charge made. However, an awful foreign bank might charge $2 per transaction, which could be more than the refundable deposit on an Oyster card.
• teknologist 8y ago
  This reminds me of the Swiss system, where there's a notion of the "half fare card" which is conventionally supplied by companies in Switzerland to their workers. 50% of the ticket price is essentially a "tourist tax", which is unavoidable by buying a different kind of ticket (like an Oyster card) at the station. I think it's pretty smart.
  • tome 8y ago
    > 50% of the ticket price is essentially a "tourist tax", which is unavoidable by buying a different kind of ticket ... at the station Do you mean "avoidable"?
    • teknologist 8y ago
      I do not. I mean it's not avoidable that way, because there's no ticket with the discount available at the station.
      • dbdjfjrjvebd 8y ago
        Can't you buy the half fare card on the spot and then use it?
        • dagw 8y ago
          You can, but it will cost ~$120-150 if I recall correctly, so unless you're making several trips it's rarely worth it. They do have a 'secret' ticket called a Swiss Transfer ticket which will take you from any airport to any train station and back for a much cheaper price than a normal train ticket. However you cannot buy it in Switzerland, but have to order online before your departure.
  • Symbiote 8y ago
    That's nothing like the situation in London. There is nothing to stop visitors from using either contactless card payments, Android/Apple pay, or an Oyster card. Oyster cards are easily purchased from all stations, especially places many people arrive like Heathrow Airport. They're promoted on websites aimed at tourists like visitlondon.com, and covered in every guidebook to the city. The £5 deposit and any remaining balance is refundable at many machines, and doesn't expire.
• novocaine 8y ago
  I didn't even realise you could buy paper tickets. You can use contactless credit cards and apple pay directly on the gate, so there's no reason to buy one.
  • robin_reala 8y ago
    I usually had a paper ticket in London because I’d be coming in from Guildford - the mag strip on the paper ticket you buy for your commute into London also encoded a travelcard for tube usage.
    • Nursie 8y ago
      Still the case now, a lot of train tickets-with-travelcard are paper. Just two weeks ago I was finally able to get an oyster-like card from South West Rail that works with the train and the tube. Progress, finally!
      • pbalau 8y ago
        Maybe there should be a generic oyster card, that should work for all public transportation systems in uk. One physical token, linked to many accounts.
        • Nursie 8y ago
          That would be nice :) I think the fragmented nature of the operating companies probably doesn't help. Maybe with time!
        • tialaramex 8y ago
          The standard for this exists, it is named ITSO. You will not be surprised to learn that although many local transport systems issue cards with ITSO logos they don't actually interoperate in a useful fashion since different local authorities and operators have contradictory requirements. For example in Bingley (Yorkshire) where my mother lives, and in Southampton (on the South Coast) where I live, the buses use ITSO smartcards. But you can't take a ride on her bus with my smartcard. Contactless bank cards do work on both systems though, and on the London transport network. So "Use a credit card" ends up being the "one physical token" solution.
• Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  It's a tactic to discourage the use of the paper tickets; they want to get rid of them, the Oyster card allows for much faster movement of people inside the stations and due to the gates much lower fraud. In NL we've moved to a card system like that some years ago; the amount of people traveling without a ticket in the subways and trains has declined by a lot, and consequently, crime and violence against the train staff that fined them if they were checked. Likewise, staff could be reallocated from appearing as a big gang of ticket checkers at the exits of random stations to other tasks. They do tend to put at least one guy near the gates though, for one to help out people that have trouble with the system, and on the other to discourage people jumping the gates. They're quite high so that's quite a feat, but there's also a builtin system so that it opens if pushed hard enough (in case of emergency). Anyway. Ticket machines are big and expensive machines.
  • sooheon 8y ago
    Why not just phase out the paper tickets? They disappeared in Korea after just a couple years of the electronic cards being on market, it seems like.
    • Symbiote 8y ago
      The national railway system is integrated with the same type of paper tickets. You can buy a ticket from a station in northern Scotland to Brighton (changing in London) and it will operate the barriers on the London Underground. It's also readable by the ticket checker on the rural service in Scotland. There are posters all over London pushing people to use contactless, it's not an attempt to swindle visitors.
      • LeonidasXIV 8y ago
        The EasyCard in Taiwan (basically an Oyster card equivalent which can also be used at shops, so more like HK's Octopus card) can be used on trains throughout the country, so train connectivity can be done without paper tickets.
  • tialaramex 8y ago
• alias_neo 8y ago
  That seems a bit steep, a day ticket is only a few pounds more. As for recommendations for tourists, Oyster is great, but, there's really no need, a contactless bank card is capped at the same day and week rate as Oyster. I've been commuting for the last year on my bank card, it's not the most financially efficient way, but it's not a lot more expensive (than a pre-paid pass). Also bear in mind that a bank card will take ~2 seconds to scan at most stations' gates, versus milliseconds for an Oyster. It might seem trivial but at London rush hour it's an annoyance for you and everyone else. One thing people also don't know is that at most stations, your card won't scan if you're standing between the gates, step back and scan or you'll just hold everyone up until you give up and walk away. It's designed this way, I imagine, so that you don't scan while someone is still paying through the gate and have it close on you before you pass through.
  • ido 8y ago
    I got an Oyster when visiting London a few years ago and taking public transit was still by a large margin more expensive than any other European city I've been to (and IIRC when available transit in the US is generally cheaper than in Europe). I was really surprised at how expensive it was! Especially as the pound's value at the time was quite a bit higher than today.
    • alias_neo 8y ago
      It's pretty expensive yes. Especially for lower paid commuters in London. Driving is also a non-starter if you work centrally so it's really your only option. The only European city I recall being expensive compared to my usual commute was Geneva, Switzerland. Eastern-bloc tend to be cheaper while the likes of Germany are closer to our prices.
      • heavenlyblue 8y ago
        Hamburg is similar.
        • ido 8y ago
• PaulRobinson 8y ago
  Do not buy single tickets on the tube, ever. They are designed to discourage you, and to push you towards solutions that are better for TfL and the environment: contactless cards. Get a contactless bank card, Apple or Android pay on your phone or smart watch, or buy an Oyster card. If you know you'll be travelling a lot for a week or two, look into a 7 day travel card which you load onto an Oyster card, and gives you unlimited travel for the zones you're interested in. You can still travel outside those zones, but will pay a fare increment.