The observant among you will have noticed a series of new pages appearing on the Fares Guide over the last week or so. Today the final link has appeared which provides access to 2018 fares in the Oyster Fare Finder.
11 thoughts on “2018 Fares”
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Hi Mike
Thanks for continuing with this incredible website! If you had a few moments I wonder if you might be able to help with a query – does seem to be the sort of thing TFL should do! Many thanks if you have any ideas…
I am shortly to start a new full time job travelling between Barking and Tooting Broadway. I will be travelling to the office most days, including a bus ride to and from the station. The TFL website is full of examples of why people should consider PAYG as opposed to a Travelcard, but surely this journey will be far cheaper to get an Annual Travelcard for? I am sure this is the case but your confirmation that I am not living in a parallel universe and should be avoiding PAYG would be great!
2) My partner’s office is moving from Zone 1 to Zone 2 and he will then be able to make the journey without going into Zone 1 at all. So a Zone 2-4 travellcard will suffice, but the office remains in zone 1 for another couple of months (fairly exactly)- do you think it is best to get a Z1-4 travel card and cancel this when the trip to Z1 is no longer needed, or is there a more sensible way of doing this?
Thanks so much!!
Claire
Hi Claire,
TfL are trying to get people to consider using PAYG rather than weekly travelcards. If you are using monthly or longer durations then the travelcard will generally be better. The annual version also gives you discounts on off-peak fares throughout South East England, East Anglia and the West Midlands so is a no-brainer.
As for your partner, buy a zone 1-4 annual travelcard and then ask for an exchange to a zone 2-4 when zone 1 is no longer needed. If you buy the original ticket by Jan 1st then you’ll still benefit from 2017 prices for the whole year. There may be a small admin fee of £5, I think.
I’ve noticed a small glitch on the station autosuggestion on the 2018 Fares finder (was probably there on 2017 also).
To select “St. John’s Wood” you have to enter the “.”. Other “Saints” don’t have the “.”, so if you type “st john” you get “St Johns (NR) 2” as a suggestion but not St John’s Wood (which you might hope to get for convenience)
Also, there is a typographical oddity that St Johns doesn’t have an apostrophe (which is as per National rail website and other sources, so that’s consistent). One of those apostrophe oddities, you might expect it to be St John’s (as it is named after the church of St. John in the parish) but it is correct (for some points of view) that the apostrophe would not be needed.
Hi Miles,
I’m not getting into the oddities of punctuation in station names. However, I agree about St John’s Wood and the full stop so I will fix that later on.
Thank Mike- really helpful. It’s 1000am on the morning of 31 December and the TFL website is already charging the new price for a season ticket – £1960! Do you know if there’s a way round this – might drop a line to TFL!
Hi Claire,
The start date of the travelcard needs to be either today or tomorrow to get the old price. I’ve just checked myself and it does work. If you select Tuesday or later then it will charge the new price.
There seems to be an anomaly somewhere:
In 2017 the off-peak TfL-Ang fares for Zone 1-9 (e.g. Brentwood into London) were set the same for a journey into Liverpool Street as for continuing beyond Liverpool Street on the underground. However, using the 2018 fare data, it’s £5.50 for Brentwood to Liverpool Street, but only £5.40 for Brentwood to another zone 1 tube station, so it’s seemingly cheaper to travel further!
(Although am I correct in saying that, in the Brentwood to London direction, the full £5.50 would be taken from Oyster balance on leaving Liverpool Street mainline, and none of it would be refunded after making a journey on the underground – it would presumably work if changing onto the underground at Stratford though?)
I could be missing something here and apologies if that is the case.
Many thanks.
Hi Daniel,
You’re not missing anything, there’s been an unintended consequence of the complicated rules surrounding what can be increased and by how much. And yes, towards London you would have to change at Stratford to avoid the overcharge being taken on Oyster. Contactless should be ok though. Thank goodness it’s not the peak fares.
I’d expect this to get fixed one way or the other by May at the latest.
Hi, I am going to travel from Redbridge to Cutty Sark, off peak, shortly, the journey is £1.50 on the default route, via Stratford, thing is I do not wish to travel via Stratford, but via Bank, therefore entering zone 1, if my card is inspected, am I in trouble for going that way, when tapping out at Cutty Sark will assume I travelled the default route ?….thank you.
Hi Mark,
You won’t be in trouble as long as you touch in at the beginning and out at the end of the journey. In this case I expect very few people would choose to go via Bank, even though it’s technically possible.
Thank you for the reply Mark, the reason we are going via Bank is less walking when changing, plus to avoid open, draughty platforms in Winter !