London Banter - View Single Post - London travellig

Martin Underwood · October 16th 06, 02:33 PM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote in message
:

Jim wrote:

Hello,

i will be visiting London from 26.10.06 to 30.10.06
Could You suggest me how is to best way to 'move' in London (buses,
tube etc.)?
I am looking for the 'most economic' option.
I would like to sightseeing a lot.

Bus is the cheapest, especially if you use Oyster cards. (They're a
sort of pre-pay smart-card system of buying tickets.)

Is there any 'weekend' or 'weekly' ticket for city communication?

Yes. They're called Travelcards, and they come in either paper or
Oyster versions depending on where you buy them.

London is divided into concentric zones - certainly for tube travel - and
you need to make sure that you buy a ticket which is valid for all the
stations that you want to visit. Assuming that you buy a ticket for the
right zone, it is valid for unlimited travel on that day.

I've only ever used a Travelcard which is valid for all zones, as an add-on
to a train ticket from outside London. I believe that is valid on all
trains, tubes and buses in the Greater London area (roughly the area within
the M25 motorway), with the exception of the Heathrow Express.

If you're travelling a fair distance, you may find it quicker to use the
tube than to use buses. Whenever I go up to London I always use the tube - I
tend to forget that buses are an alternative! Maybe within central London
(eg within the Circle Line) buses can compete on journey time, but they are
very much affected by traffic jams and can sometimes proceed at an
infuriatingly slow speed. When I went to the Science Museum in Kensington
and the Piccadilly was closed for engineering work, the replacement bus was
so slow than I was able to keep pace with it on foot as I walked towards
central London: it would overtake me, speed off into the distance and then
get caught in a jam and I'd catch it up again!

However buses do have the advantage that you can sightsee from them!