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The Ultimate Guide To London's Transport System (Megathread For London Freshers)

The Ultimate Guide to London’s Transport System
----- By k_sam_mighty (Imperial College London) -----

I’m going to level with you: the way the London transport fare system is structured is complicated. It just is I’m afraid - at its most basic level it's designed so you only pay for the distance you travel (longer distances charge more), and London is a big city with a of possible journeys from 1 minute to 1 hour - hence the complex system.

So I wrote this mega thread last year to help demystify how the fare system, and more widely London’s Transport System, works. Note that this only focuses on what’s on the tube map - yes London has boats and also Santander Hire Cycles, I don’t cover those here because that’s too much complexity for one thread

(Mods: My apologies if this is in the wrong place, but I don't use this site often. Everyone I've given this thread to has found it extremely useful, so I though it was important more people see it as I think it would help them a lot!)

The transport services available to you in London

In London there are these modes of Transport:

•

Tube (known in some countries as Metro or Underground or Subway)

•

Bus

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Train (either “National Rail Train”, i.e. the regular train operators for the UK, or “Overground”, a London-specific set of train lines for getting around the outer areas)

•

Tram

•

…plus a few others we need not concern ourselves with, such as the DLR & CableCar, which I won't get into

The map of these services (sometimes referred to as the Tube Map) shows all these services and the different fare zones, which are used to determine how much you pay.

The Main Tube Map:
(solid = a tube line, any other colours are the other important services London’s Transport System offers - check the key in the corner!)
https://tfl.gov.uk/maps/track/tube (apologies I was unable to upload any images)

The Complete Tube And Rail Map (i.e. everything you can travel on except the buses):
https://tfl.gov.uk/maps/track

https://imgur.com/a/cvOFCYl
Note the big numbers in this 3rd image: these are the fare zones. Zone 1 is the centre, and the higher the zone number the further out from the centre you are. Journeys on the transport system are charged as follows:

•

Bus & Tram: Flat rate of £1.75 per journey

•

Tube: varies - based on the zones you travel to and from

You can calculate the exact fare for a journey at https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/tube-and-rail-fares/single-fare-finder - SAVE THIS AND USE IT!

Importantly This means you will never be charged more than that cap on a day.

Daily Caps (as of 2023):

•

Bus: £5.25

•

Tube: £8.10 (Note this is the Zone 1 to 2 cap - other zones have different ones. Works out to about 2 and half journeys)

Now - that’s what you can pay for. But how do you pay for it all?

Paying for transport
You may have heard of all these different types of things:

Contactless

Oyster Card

18+ Photocard or 16+ Zip Photocard

Railcard.

Travelcard

TL;DR:
I’ll include specific recommendations for what to buy at the end.

Now, let's go through these things (contactless, oyster card, photocards, railcards, travelcards).

Contactless, Oyster Cards & Photocards

At or near the entrance of nearly every London Station, tube (all of them) or train, there are ticket barries. These have a large circle to tap a card, and a slot for paper tickets. Buses obviously don't have ticket barriers but do still have the large circle:

http://www.somewherenew.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/oyster.jpg

https://www.intelligenttransport.com/wp-content/uploads/TfL-Image-Oyster-card-reader.jpg

^ the large circle I mentioned

You can buy paper tickets from machines at stations, as you'd expect with cash or card to get a paper ticket you put into the machine.

As for the large circle, these accept Oyster Cards, Contactless or Photocards.

For Oyster Cards and Photocards you load these up with money online or at a machine and tap them on the reader to pay the fare (and then also tap the card on your way out of a station as that tells TfL's systems how far you have travelled). It works the same for contactless (just make sure money is in the account the card is linked to of course). In one day, by tapping in and out like this there is a max limit of £8.10 in Zone 1 of the fare system (the fare zones are numbered on the tube map). This is known as "Pay-as-you-go"

So if these 3 (contactless, Oyster, Photocard) work the same way then why bother with a Photocard or Oyster?
Well, the Oyster and Photocard communicate extra info compared to your contactless debit/credit card when they are tapped. Onto both you can load not just money but also travelcards. These travelcards are either virtual ones that you buy online/at the machine and are loaded (i.e. stored on the chip inside your Oyster Card/Photocard) onto your Oyster/Photo Card (see https://oyster.tfl.gov.uk/oyster/link/sso/0001.do), or paper ones you can buy at a ticket machine.

Travelcards
Travelcards grant travel over certain times (days, weeks, months, one year) by paying for the travel up front - i.e. you buy the travel card (either a paper one or loaded onto your Oyster Card) and then get unlimited travel in certain zones during that time. By paying up front you reduce the total amount spent compared to pay-as-you-go (the system where you tap a contactless card or load an Oyster / Photo card with money). Additionally, a travelcard usually granted unlimited bus travel in London!

Photocards
Further, a Photocard over a regular Oyster Card: Photocard works in the same way, but like how the Oyster has extra info on it's chip to store travelcard, the PhotoCard has extra info as well. In the case of the 16+ zip card, when you tap that at the ticket barries you're charged 50% less than you normally would if using Pay-as-you-go (i.e. money loaded onto the card) and for the 18+ photocard when you use the machines or online systems to buy a travel card (see above for what travel cards mean) you get 30% off. For the 18+ one there is NO discount on Pay-as-you-go fares.

So I've covered contactless, oyster and photocards. But what about Rail Cards?
Well a railcard is a national thing - you buy these to give you a 1/3 off trains between cities. So for example if you make a journey between London and Edinburgh (which is in the north of the country, 4 hrs away) you get a 1/3 off it. There are many different types of railcard, for us the 16-25 railcard is what we want. This Railcard further entitles you to a 1/3 off OFF-PEAK fares in London, and is loaded onto your Oyster Card or Photocard (remember the extra information I talked about that the Oyster Card/Photo card communicates to ticket barries/machines?) by a member of TfL staff at a station.

The final thing to note: contactless, Oyster Card, Photocard ways of paying work on all methods of transport in London, including rail, so long as you stay in the Fare Zones marked on the map. What this means is you can get on any train in London going to anywhere, and so long as you get off in the London Fare Zones you should be able to tap out with your Oyster Card/contactless/Photo Card at the exiting ticket barriers

What this means is you should watch for stuff like this:
https://imgur.com/a/44owVFN

Take note of things like this - this means you can NOT use your oyster or photocard at these stations, so need to tap in with contactless at your origin station!

Most important: The TfL Go app. This tell you the status of tube lines & when busses are coming, and on iOS can be pinned as a widget - this is what I did

Use Google Maps - You can literally just type in where you are and where to go to and it tells you what stations to go from how far to walk, essentially tells you the best route. You can also tell it departure times to plan future journeys. There's also the City Mapper app, but I prefer Google Maps

Tfl also has it's own journey planner: https://tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-journey/ (though I generally prefer Google Maps)

Fare finder: https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/tube-and-rail-fares/single-fare-finder (tells you the cost of journeys)

If you have to take the tube from your accommodation to uni:
Here is what I recommend you do, having lived with a tube commute from campus in first year (I did the maths on this):

If you're going to travel on the train a lot, e.g. to go home, get a railcard. Doesn't really matter how - Santander I know do a free 4 year one with their student account - get it. As I said it will give you a 1/3 off off-peak fares

Next, get a 18+ Oyster Student Photocard. You can apply for these online (google it), you need your accom address. Note that they might take a while to come!

Once you get your photocard:
- Go to a tube station, load your railcard if you have one onto your photocard
- Load an Odd Period Travelcard onto your Photocard online, from the date you get the card until the end of the Autumn Term. Then at the start of Spring Term load a odd period travel card for the duration of the spring term on, and same for the Summer Term, etc. This is by far the cheapest way to pay for travel, working out at about £3.50 a day

If you do not have to take the tube from your accommodation to uni:

Get a regular Oyster Card from a Tube Station

Load your railcard onto there

Top up the Oyster Card regularly and use that whenever you do travel

Hope this all helps you get around!

(edited 7 months ago)

Reply 1

Anonymous #1

Thank you! This is so helpful.
I understand you have to link your rail card to your oyster card to get a discount.
What do you do if you’re travelling from London to Southend central. As Southend do not except contactless or oyster. Does that mean you have to buy a paper ticket every single day?

I will be going on the central line and then going on greater anglia and it’s confusing because when you go to central line station you tap on with Oyster card but once you arrive in Southend they do not accept oyster or contactless.

I was told to buy a ticket