Commuting into London
 

Right - I'm changing jobs next month, which will mean that I am going to be doing a regular commute into central London. I did it for about 6 years, so I'm quite used to the daily hassles of London Transport. However, the thing that is confusing me is ticket types and the use of Oyster.

I like the sound of Oyster, but I'm coming in from a mainline rail station (St Margarets in Herts) which is outside zone 6. The Oyster site isn't exactly clear on the options, but it looks like I could get a normal ticket to (say) Tottenham Hale and then use a travelcard, stored on an Oyster card to cover the rest of the journey. Am I understanding this right? Anyone else do a similar journey?

Chris

:( No one commutes on here?

Sorry - avoid London like the plague these days!

Thanks Olly! It's that or the M25 and Slough. I'll take London :)

think possibly mr jones will have the answers for you here mate.

I dont think St Margarets or Broxbourne for that matter have oyster termial things, may work out cheaper in that respect to get an annual card.

It's south of the Watford gap so it's still London to me.

Drove down the a couple of weeks back for a training course, took 5 bloody hours to get to Heathrow.

5 hours from Derby to Heathrow, you should try turning onto the south bound side of the M1 when you leave Derby!

I did - made the M25 in a little over an hour :D The M25 was a nightmare and the M4 had a broken down truck on which was causing the back log on the M25.

Yes, you can get a "rail only" ticket from St. Margarets and then use an Oyster card from Tottenham Hale/Liverpool Street. I don't think it works out any cheaper than getting a Z123 Travelcard from St. Margarets though, although you don't have to take the Oyster card out and stick it in the machine.

Whereabouts in London are you going to be working? A surprisingly large amount of it is accessible by walking from Liverpool Street (if the weather's nice, of course).

That's my daily commute you're talking about!
Round the M25 anti clockwise and in on the M4 to Hammersmith.
Thank your lucky stars you only had to do it once, I do it twice a day!

I used to live and work in London, got sick of that. Used to commute from the Midlands to Cambridge (80 miles each way per day), got sick of all that an now live about 8 miles from work. Still no busses to get me to work in a meaningful way, but the fuel bil has gone down a smidge at least!

I used to commute every day from dorset to EC4 for 3 years on an annual rail season ticket with inclusive travel card. got me down from £60+zone 1 travel card to £20 per day. btw, that commute was 25 hours a week on a train!

I now live and work in zone 1, so oyster is invaluable.

you can either pay for a period of time per zone or pre pay (touch at start of journey and touch at end - you will not be charged more than a day's travel card for the zone's you travel in that day)

your options are
rail ticket only or rail ticket and oyster (from zone 6, prepay i would presume).
the latter option means having to pay 2 tickets (might be cheaper, but more hassle!)

check on transport for www.tfl.gov.uk for oyster prices.

Can you walk from the station in London instead? Rich gets the train every morning into Euston.. by the time it took for him to get onto a tube, he could have walked to Great Portland St. When we saw how much the railcard was with/without tube it was a case of train + walk and not spend £700 for extra tube ticket.
If he needs to go anywhere else in London, he gets to charge it back to clients anyway.

Thanks all - my new office is not exactly close to Liverpool St. My nearest tube station is Pimlico - on the Victoria Line, which is why it makes sense to pick up the tube from Tottenham Hale. Also, a lot of my customers are based in London, so there is a good chance, I'll be using the tube to visit most of them during the day.

Blimey, Pimlico. That's a long way on the Vic line. Surely that's going to take you 1.75-2 hours each way?

Naa, it's less than that, 1.5 hours I reckon, changing at Tottenham Hale. Even faster if you get on at Broxbourne, missing out the slow train from St Margarets. Come December there may not be a fast service anymore from the Hertford East branch so we'll all have to change at Broxbourne anyway :(

hi there i am along the liverpool st. line and have to go to pimlico every day, you get used to it i do have a travelcard which cost around 3k though!

Well I do Bishop's Stortford to Covent Garden and I reckon that's about 1.5 hours. Never less than 1.25 hours.

I do Hertford East to Oxford Circus daily on the exact same route Chris is contemplating, changing at Tottenham Hale. On a good day I've done it in about 1 hour 10 minutes - but that is _extremely_rare_ :)

Timed it last week - 50 mins from steping on the train at St Margarets to steping off the tube at Pimilco. 10 min walk either end. Assuming there are no problems of course :)

And it's still quicker than trying to get round the M25 on an average day!

Will you be wanting to hire a car parking space very close to St Margarets station? :D

Which train did you get from St Margarets? That's pretty fast, and about right considering my time is using the 0836 from Hertford East.

LOL Sal :) A very kind offer, but I think I'm going to be good and walk to the station each morning - mind you if it is pouring in rain.....

Steve - can't remember which train that was - quite a late one I think.