Tube to Heathrow - Hatton Cross hack

Transport for London recently slipped out the news that all journeys to and from Heathrow stations through central London will be charged at peak rates from today.

There doesn't seem to be any official announcement of the bad news from either TfL or the Mayor's office - they seem to have chosen to brief journalists without a detailed press release.

So from today a single fare from Oxford Circus to Debden (Zone 6) will continue to cost you £3.50 off peak, the same journey to Heathrow (Zone 6) will cost you £5.50 at all times.

This only applies to/from or through Zone 1, so if you're west of Zone 1 you're in luck, or if your normal Heathrow journey skirts Zone 1 (using Overground for example) you're also in luck.

Just like how Gatwick journeys are usually cheaper if you change trains at East Croydon and circle the gate line, it's also now cheaper to change trains for Heathrow journeys.

But there are so many different stations where you could split your journey - which should you choose?  It turns out that the answer is simple - Hatton Cross.  Because there's free travel between Hatton Cross and the Heathrow stations, the answer is always Hatton Cross!

The only journey where the answer is anything other than Hatton Cross, is if you are starting in Zone 1 during Peak, and you can change train during Off Peak at a Zone 1/2 boundary station (e.g. Earls Court)

Peak:  From Zone 1 to Zone 1/2 boundary (e.g. Earls Court)  £2.50

Off Peak:  From Zone 1/2 boundary (e.g. Earls Court) to Heathrow  £1.90

Save £1.10

Conclusion

If you want to avoid the £2 fare increase for Off Peak travel between Heathrow and Central London, then for almost everybody changing at Hatton Cross and circling the gate line is the answer.  

And don't forget the East Croydon trick to reduce the cost of your Gatwick travel.

2020 Fares Unfreeze

Whilst the Mayor is today tweeting about his claimed "fares freeze", the reality (as we have previously seen) is different !

For many TfL users, the daily caps are what impacts them - and they are increasing inline with national fares - something that isn't under the Mayor's control (although he fails to mention this).

So for example, a day travelling around Zones 1 & 2 in London will cost you an extra 20p in 2020.

And for many TfL users, the weekly caps are what impacts them - and these are again subject to the national fare increases, and something which is again mysteriously missing from all official announcements and emails !

A week travelling around London's Zone 1 & 2 areas will cost you an extra 1 gbp in 2020.

For completeness - the full 2020 fare table is shown below:





And for more comparisons over the last five years, have a look a DiamondGeezer's blog post.

2018 and 2019 Transport for London fares

I've written before about how TfL have a nasty habit of deleting the old fare tables from their website, so you can't see what the price rises over the years have been.

In preparation for the next deletion, here is the 2018 fare table:




and the 2019 fare table:





For comparison - the price of a Zone 1 & 2 weekly travelcard over the last four years:

2016  32.40 gbp
2017  33.00 gbp
2018  34.10 gbp
2019  35.10 gbp

Updated: Gatwick Airport to London using contactless

8/1/19 - updated with 2019 prices

15/5/18 - updated to include split ticket pricing at East Croydon - thanks to Gerry's comment on DiamondGeezer.blogspot.com for the reminder.  Although not sure I personally would bother - even though the savings are actually more than the Zone1/Zone2 hack!


Before contactless payment was extended to Gatwick, it was a battle to find the cheapest fare using the Southern website or Trainline or even occasionally Gatwick Express !

Contactless makes life a bit easier - as the Contactless off peak fare is usually the best you can get.

The added benefit is that there is no evening peak when travelling from Gatwick Airport into London ... at least that's what I thought ... until I started looking at fares to West Brompton ... where it turns that that evening peak does apply.

So here's how the pricing officially works for LGW - West Brompton (although we know that you get a couple of minutes leeway before peak fares kick in):

00:00 - 06:29    £8.50
06:30 - 09:29  £12.30
09:30 - 15:59    £8.50
16:00 - 18:59  £12.30

19:00 - 23:59    £8.50

The thing is that Earls Court doesn't have an evening peak - so at West Brompton, if you swap onto the District Line and go a single stop to Earls Court you can reduce the price from £12.30 down to £10.90

In fact if you could travel to any Zone 1 tube station, the evening peak magically disappears ... but travel to any other London station (that I tested using TfL's single fare finder website) and the evening peak does exist.

So the moral of the story is that if you're on the border of Zone 1 and Zone 2 and travelling from Gatwick (Monday to Friday) - you should travel from the following:

00:00 - 06:29    £8.50  from Zone 2
06:30 - 09:29  £12.30  from Zone 2
09:30 - 15:59    £8.50  from Zone 2
16:00 - 18:59  £10.90  from Zone 1

19:00 - 23:59    £8.50  from Zone 2


But if you have the time to touch out and back in again at East Croydon station (for a split ticket saving) - whilst the evening peak does apply from Gatwick to East Croydon (£5.30 vs £3.20), it does not apply from East Croydon to Zone 1 (morning peak £7.00 vs £5.00).
This used to mean that it was cheaper to travel to Zone 1 in the evening peak - however it appears that the pricing has changed in order to make Zone 2 cheaper - which also reduces the benefit of splitting your journey at East Croydon.

00:00 - 06:29    £6.00  from Zone 2
06:30 - 09:29    £9.10  from Zone 2
09:30 - 15:59    £6.00  from Zone 2
16:00 - 18:59    £9.10  from Zone 2

19:00 - 23:59    £6.00  from Zone 2

Zone 1
off peak  £3.20 + £5.00 = £8.20
morning peak £5.30 + £7.00 = £12.30
evening peak £5.30 + £5.00 = £10.30

Zone 2
off peak £3.20 + £2.80 = £6.00
morning and evening peak £5.30 + £3.80 = £9.10


Travelling from London to Gatwick the evening peak does apply regardless where you start - so it's £3.20 cheaper to start from Zone 2 if you get into the station between 16:00 and 18:59 (or £2.20 cheaper from Zone 2 if you can get into the station during off peak hours).

Don't use Oyster from St Pancras to Stratford

I needed to attend a talk at one of the hotels adjoining Westfield Stratford, and having recently used a Javelin train from St Pancras to Kent (through Stratford), I thought it would be fun to do the one stop - since I'd seen the yellow Oyster/Contactless scanners.

Walking up to the barriers there was nothing to suggest that using Oyster/Contactless was anything other than a normal journey.

Imagine my surprise when I happened to check my statement, only to find that I had been charged 5.50 gbp for the journey, despite having reached my daily cap - wtf ?!

After extensive searching, I discovered that journeys on the Javelin trains are completely outside the travelcard or daily/weekly price caps.

So my one stop journey cost me 5.50 gbp in addition to my daily 6.60 gbp cap for Zone 1-2 travel.  For the saving of approximately 3 minutes, I paid almost 2 pounds a minute.

TfL really should make this clear on their journey planner website, and around the entrance to the platforms at St Pancras.  I can't believe I'm the first person to suffer this pain / outrage.  

TfL zone extensions

I've written a few times before about the downside of PAYG Oyster/Contactless - but one of the upsides (when it works), is that if you travel outside your normal zones, you only pay the daily cap for the zones you travel in.

So if I'm usually paying £6.60 per day to travel within Zone1-2 but on one day in the week I make journeys in Zone3, my daily cap kicks in a £7.70 - so just £1.10 extra for all my journeys in Zone3.  It gets more complicated if your journeys are on your 6th or 7th day, when the Monday to Sunday cap has already kicked in (I need to follow up with TfL on my refund request).

The downside of the Oyster Travelcard is that for extra journeys outside your Travelcard zones, you pay as if you are making a single journey from the edge of your zone.  So with my Zone1-2 Travelcard, if I want to visit a friend in Zone3, TfL will charge me £3.40 for a return during peak, or £3.00 for a return off peak.  And if you're travelling to a Zone3 National Rail station, it become £4.20 during peak and £3.80 off peak.  This seem rather a lot for what can be just a single extra station.

One way you may be able to reduce that fare a little if you're travelling off peak is by using your Network Railcard (assuming you have one) when purchasing a ticket in advance.  On Saturday I bought a ticket from the edge of Zone2 to West Norwood in Zone3 (from the ticket counter at Victoria station) and saved a whole pound sterling !

The ticket agent checked that my Oyster really did have a valid Zone1-2 Travelcard, and didn't seem overly keen, but she did eventually come up with it.

Oyster Revolution

Last week Future Cities Catapult organised a talk by Matthew Hudson from TfL entitled The Story of Oyster: How TfL Revolutionised Urban Fare Collection.

I missed the first few minutes, but it was still a fascinating run through Oyster / Contactless ... not least a reminder that the original impetus to develop Oyster was the queues that used to build up at the ticket barriers, as the use of paper tickets (Magstripe) was incredibly slow compared to Oyster and even Contactless !

One option was to build lots more ticket barriers - but thankfully TfL developed Oyster.

Below are some random nuggets from the talk together with some of my views ...

A maximum of 15 passengers per minute can get through ticket barriers using the old Magstripe tickets

A busy commuter station like Liverpool Street (as opposed to a station with lots of tourists) can get over 25 passengers per minute through each barrier using Oyster

Contactless is a bit slower (it has to run more check processes before deciding to open the gate) but it is getting quicker with new Contactless chips, and also TfL are trying to reduce the number of check processes to speed it up.

5.5m people regularly use Oyster Pay as You Go (PAYG)

This represents 86% of users - although some/many also have a Travelcard

58% of fares come from PAYG

The TfL board have decided PAYG should be the primary product in future

The original incentive for season tickets (which was the cost of issue and congestion at the ticket office) is gone

It sounds like in future the PAYG and Travelcard fares will be equalised

Matthew talked about the original requirement for tickets being to stop the bus conductors from pocketing the fares - it wasn't to control passengers.

Oyster customer level data is kept for 2 months - to help resolve customer issues

This compares with Paris where customer data has to be binned at the end of every day

The original Oyster configuration where if you failed to "touch out" you were charged the minimum fare resulted in 15% fare evasion

No mention of what fare evasion level is on Boris buses !

Serious Oyster analysis started in the lead up to London 2012

There was up to a 7% decrease in passenger volumes following widespread warnings about congestion - some stations felt empty !

There are many requests from different parts of TfL for Oyster analysis - most of which get denied as they won't actually lead to better decision making.

TfL have licenced the intellectual property behind Oyster/Contactless to the company Cubic for 15m gbp - TfL themselves will not be directly installing Oyster around the world.

Matthew said that in future TfL will make Oyster "more like Contactless"

There will be a weekly cap on Oyster in the future - and refunds will be pushed out to all Oyster readers (including buses) ready for collection the next time the Oyster card is tapped.

Sounds to me that I will be able to stop using my Contactless once weekly Oyster capping arrives !

Contactless is 40% more expensive than Oyster

I've written before about how Contactless can be more expensive that Oyster - but I've never done the (fairly simple) calculations to work out by how much.

The important point is that with Contactless, Transport for London computers take your Monday to Sunday travel, and work out whether you have paid more than the cost of a weekly travelcard - and refund you the difference another week later.  That's fine if you arrive into London on a Monday ... but what if you don't arrive on a Monday ?

Let's take somebody arriving into London on a Wednesday and departs the following Tuesday (7 days in London) - and assume a few tube trips around Zone 1-2 each day - enough to reach the daily 6.60 gbp cap

With Contactless it looks like this:

Wednesday £6.60
Thursday £6.60

Friday £6.60

Saturday £6.60

Sunday £6.60

Total £33.00

Monday to Sunday cap of £33.00 - so no refund

Monday £6.60

Tuesday £6.60

Total £13.20

Grand Total £46.20

But if you'd bought a 7 day travelcard on your Oystercard on the Wednesday morning - it would have been a straightforward £33.00 - a saving of £13.20

So if you start your 7 days using Contactless on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday it is a whopping 40% more expensive than Oyster.

So much for all those adverts that "Contactless is the same price as Oyster".

If you start your 7 days using Contactless on a Tuesday or a Sunday it is still an unpleasant 20% more expensive than Oyster.

If you're staying in London for five days or less, then Contactless is the same price as Oyster Pay as you Go.
If you're staying in London for more than 7 days (and not arriving on a Monday) then Contactless will almost always be more expensive than Oyster.

The moral of the story is don't believe the TfL propaganda - Contact is NOT the same price as Oyster.

Transport for London fare increases

One of my complaints about how companies increase their prices is that they don't normally tell you what percentage they are going up by - so you can't get a feel for whether it's reasonable or how it compares to inflation over the last year.

TfL seem to suffer the same failing - with just a general comment about travelcards going up by less than 2%.  So I thought that it might be useful to start saving the annual list of prices - they delete the old prices from their website when they announce the new ones !

After some time googling for the 2016 list - I finally managed to find the pdf:

And of course the the 2017 pdf that is currently available on the TfL website - which I've saved for posterity:

I also came across a london.gov webpage (which will presumably be removed at the end of the year as well) which handily breaks down the increases - and of course blames the Train Operating Companies (TOCs) !

Why Oyster is better than Contactless

Yesterday I wrote about how using Contactless on Transport for London is more expensive than using Oyster in two important ways.

Even if you Contactless is the same price as Oyster for your usage, there are other differences which are important to understand.

Contactless does have some advantages:

1) You don't spend time buying ticket / loading credit onto Oyster

2) If you're unsure how much travel you will be making (and so don't want to buy a weekly Travelcard), you may be able to take advantage of Mon-Sun cap

3) Instead of payment (for Travelcard or Oyster top-up) hitting your credit card bill at the start of the week/month, the payments are deducted each day (although for most this is a minimal saving)

4) You can earn interest on your money from not keeping credit on Oyster card (again minimal, approx. 5p per year)

The disadvantages of Contactless (apart from being more expensive) are even bigger:

1) The yellow readers take longer for Contactless than Oyster - which isn't surprising, but definitely slows you down

2) The embarrassment of waving your fancy credit card at the yellow reader - and risk of dropping / losing it (depends of your embarrassment tolerance and the fanciness of your card!)

3) Loss of credit card loyalty points - with Contactless your card is debited with your daily total spend (rather than a single debit for your weekly/monthly Travelcard or Oyster top-up amount). Many credit cards round down to the nearest pound (or 8 pounds if you have a Tesco reward card) for points calculations - so if you have a Tesco card you probably won't earn any loyalty points at all, and others may also lose out

4) To check that you have been charged correctly with Contactless you have to look at all your transactions for the week - and compare the total to the prices on the TfL website - and then do the calculations to see if you have been charged more than the weekly Travelcard price plus travel outside your core zones.  With Oyster, you only have to see how much has come off your Pay As You Go balance - this should just be your travel outside your Travelcard zones - much more simple.

5) Contactless makes spending money too easy / hidden - where as your Oyster Pay As You Go balance is much more visible (it shows on the bus / modern tube exit each time you pass through).

6) If you miss tapping out at the end of a journey, with Contactless you will instantly be hit with a penalty fare which you will only notice if you check your credit card statement.  But with an Oyster Travelcard the system may assume that you exited at a valid station.  Even if you are hit with a penalty fare - it is easier to spot as your Oyster PAYG balance will reduce dramatically, and can be easily fixed at any of the TfL ticket machines.

7) If you are due a refund on Contactless you may have to phone up TfL (although this may just be for American Express cards), whereas you can collect a refund on Oyster at any nominated station.

The moral of the story - use Oyster!

Contactless is NOT the same price as Oyster

Transport for London is trying hard to get everybody to use their Contactless credit and debit cards, rather than using Oyster - which is more expensive for them to run.

To push Contactless TfL are making frequent announcements over the Public Address in stations that "Contactless is the same price as Oyster".  They even make the same claim on their website.  Both are lies.

There are two main scenarios where Contactless fares are NOT the same price as Oyster.

1. Weekly usage for any period which doesn't start on a Monday.

If you are starting on a Monday, then the Monday-Sunday cap will mean that you pay the same as a standard 7 day travelcard.  However, if you start on any other day, you will pay more - possibly a lot more.

So, if you are starting your travel on anything other than a Monday - it is cheaper to buy a travelcard on your Oystercard.

2. If you are going to be using Transport for London services for a month.

Despite the (false) claim that Contactless costs the same as Oyster, TfL do actually admit that regular users should buy a monthly travelcard - but they bury it in their website, and make no mention on their Public Address announcements.

I hate to think how much regular commuters are wasting on weekly Contactless fares, when they should be buying a monthly travelcard.

It is shameful that TfL lie about Contactless - and thereby steal from their customers.