Good idea?

hegyestomi

Hi all,
you might have seen/heard of this, but it sounds like an good starting point for a discussion:
http://glaconservatives.co.uk/flexible-commuting/
Personally I wouldn't want to buy a yearly travelcard for £2k but it sounds like a good initiate.

dhope

Sounds like a good idea to me, as long as it's actually a decent saving over just using an Oyster card a few times.

rjsterry

For the fairly regular cyclist, a PAYG Oyster is surely still cheaper than some discounted season ticket. You'd need to be only riding a couple of days a week for a rebate to start making sense, no?

hegyestomi

I think it comes down to the number of days you ride in:I saw a suggestion of £300 saved over the year (if you have an annual Zone 1-6 travelcard) but not sure how many days you need to ride in.
What I think can work out well if you share one travelcard with your partner and take turn to "enjoy" public transport.

Edit:
One day a week of riding would get you £310.50 at the end of the year.

markhewitt1978

More flexibility with ticketing is a good thing. For example when I used to work in York but live in Durham, I would have liked to get the train perhaps twice a week and drive the rest of the time. But the pricing of tickets meant that I either got the train every day, or not at all. So I drove every day instead.

lastant

Think it's a good idea, but getting the rebate at the end of the year is a bit of a killer. Also, I'm guessing the rebate will be calculated by simply totting up the days you didn't tap in anywhere?

The idea interests me, but want to see more detail before deciding if I'm for it 100% or not.

slowbike

I've just looked at bus prices for my commute - just to see ...

£76.50 for 4 weeks - although that would get me on any bus service in my area at any time - but if I just used it for commuting I'd get 20 return trips at £3.83 per day ...

Problem is - I have a car that returns 55mpg and costs 11 pence per mile in fuel to run - I'm only including fuel as I cycle to work as often as possible, but I'd still keep the car anyway - for journeys I'd need a car on!
So, by car those 20 return trips would cost me £2.09 per day - or £41.82 for the 4 weeks - so less than £10 per week cheaper and perhaps a consideration if I didn't have a car and didn't cycle to work - but considering I do, it's never going to be cheaper to go by bus (the only public transport available for me).

TheStone

Oyster cards were a brilliant move. Flexible, auto top-up etc.
Not sure what this offers above that.

Looking at my trip Z1-3, it would be £1,472/year divided by 220 work days = £6.69/day.
Oyster PAYG = £6.40/day

So it's the extra days you get free with the travelcard versus flexibility of the PAYG.
For some, cashflow would be an issue too.

RedWheels

They could just drop the prices of PAYG so there is no financial distinction between weekly monthly cards etc. The reason you put those pricing methods in is to incentivise regular use, this would originally have been against a car. We now have policies which act as disincentives for car use, such as Congestion charging - these should be expanded.

by making a car a non-choice, and then removing financial incentives for sole use of a single transport method (travel cards) you instantly make the bike choice safer (less cars) and more financially worthwhile.

Applespider

Because my commute is a two-stage affair - bus and then Tube/train - it means that I generally hit the PAYG cap just to get to work and back at peak times. Doing that 3 times a week and I'd be cheaper with a weekly Travelcard rather than PAYG. So being able to buy a 3 day card would be useful occasionally if there's a spell of snowy weather or a series of nights out. The rebate less so - since I'd effectively be loaning TFL money by having to fork out for a Travelcard that I'm only likely to use 4-5 times a month - even if I ended up with a massive rebate at the end to go towards the next year's card presumably!

Other things that would help utilise transport more effectively would be if you use a bus to get to the station, that fare should be taken into account when paying for your Tube/train if within a certain time. You should be able to switch buses within a certain time period without being penalised with an additional fare. After all, you can make numerous Tube/DLR interchanges without paying for each one.

hegyestomi

RedWheels wrote:

.... The reason you put those pricing methods in is to incentivise regular use, this would originally have been against a car. We now have policies which act as disincentives for car use, such as Congestion charging - these should be expanded...

I'm a bit more cynical about it: I think they want our money now in one installment and not in daily/weekly/monthly.
Therefore regardless your circumstances (location or needs) you have already paid and committed for the year.
Also congestion charge isn't a real deterrent anymore, central London is always packed.

lancew

For me this would be a nice incentive to get me to cycle in over taking the train.

My issue lies in "what if I get a train into London or a bus into town on the weekend"

All of a sudden that trip has cost me essentially a full days travel.

I would be interested in saving money for cycling in, but I'd imagine that this would not be able to be flexible enough. Fair play for trying though.