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If I want to travel for 7 days per week, among these 7 days, I need to cap for zones 1-2 for 2 or 3 days on PAYG, cap for zones 1-3 for 2 or 3 days on PAYG, and outboundary travel on the weekends, will I be better off in buying a monthly Zones 1-2 Travelcard, Zones 1-3 Travelcard, or rely on PAYG? (I am not considering an annual at this stage because I have a plan to move later this year, and I am looking to move to a place served by National Rail to buy a cheaper annual rail-only ticket and stop using the Underground as much as possible).
A major benefit of using a Travelcard is that I won’t need to pay for the capped PAYG and the National Rail fare to/from London Terminal separately if my outboundary journey is on a through train from London. This benefit doesn’t apply if I change at Clapham Junction instead, but unfortuately now I live at a place where it is much faster to travel via Waterloo or Victoria.
Hi Michael,
The difference between a weekly zone 1-2 and zone 1-3 travelcard is £7.50. Four zone 3 singles at peak times will be at least £7.60, and even if all were Underground off-peak it would be £7.20. Unless you’re sure that you won’t make 4 single zone 3 journeys I think a zone 1-3 travelcard would be better. Given your need for extension tickets at the weekend, I’d rule out using PAYG for capping too. The other benefit to travelcards is that they can start on any day.
Thanks for your explanation. It seems that 4 journeys in zone 3 + weekend extensions are enough to tip the balance to a bigger Travelcard if there is no discount.
However, will the balance be tipped to the other side if, instead, I have a suitable railcard for discounted off-peak travel, while still travel enough to max out on the PAYG all-day basis? My zone 3 journeys will most likely be off-peak, 2 on National Rail and 2 on TfL scale per week, but it can be more or less. I think that I tried to work out this situation in the past and got a conclusion that no Travelcard was a good value, because paying for 3 capped 1-2 plus 2 capped 1-3 worked out less than the 1-2 Travelcard plus the zone 3 extensions, but is it really possible?
Just noticed I never came back to this. If you have a railcard then obviously you’ll get more off-peak journeys in zone 3 before it’s worthwhile getting the bigger travelcard. The thing to note, railcard or not, is that when making extension journeys using PAYG you will still be limited by the same zone 1 centered daily/weekly cap.
It really depends how much time you wish to spend on saving a small amount of money.
Thanks for replying me. Unfortunately I have checked my race calendar and it seems that I have nowhere to go over the weekends in the whole month which requires me to travel by tube across Central London, and I will likely want to take my cycle across London on the Thameslink core or West London Line instead by using a West Hampstead Stations to somewhere in the south Super Off-Peak Day Return.
I think I will stick with PAYG then such that I will have the freedom to save money buy not travelling at all, and cycle to work if I want to use my cycle after work. If I know that I am going to travel on the tube for 7 days in a particular week I will then buy a weekly for that week instead.
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