On Jul 10, 1:06*pm, John B wrote:

On Jul 10, 11:18*am, Mizter T wrote:

On Jul 10, 10:50*am, John B wrote:

[snip]

Also, if you make two peak journeys a day even just on London
Underground, an annual Travelcard is cheaper per day than Oyster PAYG
would be.

Worth emphasising that John is referring to an *annual* Travelcard, as
opposed to a weekly or a monthly, in which case the situation might be
different an Oyster PAYG *may* be cheaper.

Also, the statement isn't necessarily true for journeys that don't
involve zone 1 anyway! Example - a two zone commute (that's a
combination of any two zones outside zone 1). The Oyster PAYG fare is
£1.10 (and is the same at peak and off-peak PAYG times) - so a weekly
commute (there and back five out of seven days) is £11, and even if
one was to do this 52 weeks of the year without a break, it would come
to £572. Meanwhile a two-zone annual Travelcard (for any two zone
combo outside z1) costs £664.

Of course the Travelcard would bring with it the benefit of allowing
unlimited travel in those two zones on LU and NR (and DLR), and
unlimited bus travel anywhere in London, and would also mean one would
likely pay less for LU journeys that started in one of those two zones
and ended elsewhere (courtesy of the automatic ticket extension
facility granted by having a combo of Travelcard and PAYG on one card)
- and the annual Travelcard would provide Gold Card benefits too - so
it'd certainly be worthwhile considering it.

Point being, there's no absolute rule that says an annual Travelcard
will be cheaper than merely using PAYG.

Oops. Forgot about those lucky[*] types who don't have to go into/
through Z1 for their commute!

[*] FSVO lucky. I'm still slightly traumatised by the six months I
spent attempting to commute z2-z2 using the Silverlink in pre-LO days.

As they say on the box, 'Other non-zone 1 commutes are also available'
i.e. apart from London Overground of course! And many of these are
perfectly ok, especially - and unsurprisingly - the contra-peak flow
commutes (and there are of course a sizeable number of people who do
these too).

Also, there are a significant number of opportunities for piling out
of a train or Tube in zone 2 territory before making an onward journey
by bus into zone 1 - of course this entirely depends upon the location
trying to be reached (and I suppose to some extent the price
conciousness of the commuter too - but not necessarily).

An example would be someone who works somewhere on Vauxhall Bridge
Road (that's the road north of Vauxhall Bridge that leads up to
Victoria station). Say they live in Barnes - they can then catch the
train from Barnes (z3) to Vauxhall (z1/2 border - so for this purpose
z2), then catch one of the many frequent buses (2, 36, 436, 185)
that's heading over Vauxhall Bridge up to work.

Incidentally my limited-ish experience of these buses in the morning
at Vauxhall is that a good number of people pile out at Vauxhall to
get on the Victoria line - and some presumably onto SWT for journeys
heading out of town - which means there's space for people to get on,
and a sizeable number of people seem to do just that (many
transferring from other buses, but I'd think a good number must come
off SWT to do this as well - no, I've no stat to back this up, merely
my limited observation that some of them look like they've come from
SWT-land - sterotypes-R-us!).

The same situation applies to greater and lesser extents on the
fringes of zone 1 and 2 elsewhere - in some cases those who would
perhaps do well to exploit it are indeed perhaps more likely to be
price-concious commuters - but this isn't necessarily so, e.g. leave
the train at Battersea Park or Queenstown Road Battersea for buses
(137 or 452) to Sloane Square or Knighsbridge, or perhaps leave the
train or Tube at Elephant & Castle for buses to Holborn.