Reducing commute cost by avoiding zone 1

Hi there,

I currently commute every day from North London zone 3 (Crouch End area) to my office in the Aldgate area. I use an oyster card with 16-25 railcard discount applied.

For this journey, I either use Great Northern between Hornsey and Moorgate, or bus to Finsbury Park then tube to Aldgate. If I use Great Northern both there and back, my daily commute cost is £8 – if I use tube/bus, I pretty much always cap out at £7.70 (although other days recently my daily cap has been both £5.10 and £9.40, for reasons I’m assuming are to do with peak/off peak usage). I am, therefore, paying between £38 – £40 for my weekly travel.

However, both Shadwell and Whitechapel stations are within walking distance of my office – and I’ve realised I could save a decent amount by using these stations to avoid zone 1. If I were to use Crouch Hill to take the GOBLIN to Wanstead Park, then OSI to Forest Gate and take the Elizabeth line to Whitechapel, I could reduce my daily commute cost to £4 return (or £3.15 if I were to return off peak and trigger the 16-25 railcard discount). This would then save me in the region of £60 – £78 a month.

I know that the route via Wanstead Park and Forest Gate would work well for the purpose of this, but there’s another route I’m intrigued/confused about – getting on the DLR at Shadwell, going 1 stop eastbound to Limehouse then taking C2C to Barking and GOBLIN to Crouch Hill. When I look on Oyster single fare finders, it’s saying that I would have to go ‘Avoiding Zone 1 via Leytonstone/Leytonstone High Road or via Forest Gate/Wanstead Park’ in order to pay the non zone-1 fare. My guess is that this is because there’s no pink reader at Barking – although you do cross a gate line at Limehouse changing from DLR to C2C, there’s no way of the system knowing that you haven’t just taken a C2C train back towards Fenchurch Street as opposed to out of London.

There must surely be a case for putting a pink reader at Barking – I often use London City Airport for work trips and use the route: DLR from LCY to West Ham, C2C to Barking, GOBLIN to Crouch Hill, and it’s annoying that you seem to have to use the Forest Gate – Wanstead Park OSI to be charged the cheapest fair.

To cut to the chase – is there any way of doing my daily journey avoiding zone 1 but without using the OSI? Not the end of the world, but just wondering if there’s a way of approaching this that I’m missing… There’s no point, I guess, doing tube from Turnpike Lane -> Higbury & Islington (touch pink reader) then Overground -> Stratford and Elizabeth line -> Whitechapel, as the lack of crossing any barrier at Stratford would make the system think I’d just done Overground from H&I to Whitechapel, I assume?