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London - tube & parking or just pay London parking?
DaisyBumbleroot
Posts: 24,763 Forum Member
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I am spending a night in London next month and have a hotel booked.
We'll be coming down in the car but parking in London is expensive - £35 for 24 hours.
The hotel is the top part of Hyde Park and we are going to the Royal Albert Hall which is the bottom part of Hyde Park. Its for one night so will we need tube passes? Is it ok to walk through Hyde Park at night after the show?
Or will it be better to go to a tube station, park there and tube it in? Im wondering if this will be more economical (car park fees, plus tube tickets for two days for two people) or if we might as well pay the £35 if we dont need tube passes to get from hotel to R.A.H?
Anyone got any advice please
We'll be coming down in the car but parking in London is expensive - £35 for 24 hours.
The hotel is the top part of Hyde Park and we are going to the Royal Albert Hall which is the bottom part of Hyde Park. Its for one night so will we need tube passes? Is it ok to walk through Hyde Park at night after the show?
Or will it be better to go to a tube station, park there and tube it in? Im wondering if this will be more economical (car park fees, plus tube tickets for two days for two people) or if we might as well pay the £35 if we dont need tube passes to get from hotel to R.A.H?
Anyone got any advice please
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Which is better value hard to say, depending what else you plan to do, for example a day travelcard is £12.00 each (zone 1-4) so that is £24.00...and depending on the hotel you are staying there are some NCP car parks in the area (eg Arthurs Court) that are about £26.00 for 24 hours.
Leave the car at the hotel and use public transport from then on. London transport is simply in a different league from the rest of the UK, including 24/7 night buses.
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/maps/bus
Another option is to rent one of those blue bikes. There's a £2 charge for 24 hours, and hiring is free if not more than 30 minutes at a time. (I know there's a rental station at Marble Arch just inside the park, but don't know when the park shuts.)
But if there are two of you, then walking might be safe enough. Especially if a few hundred others are coming out of the venue at the same time.
Not with Oyster or One Day Travelcards.
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/visiting-london/visitor-oyster-card?intcmp=4043
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/oyster?intcmp=1683
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/tube-dlr-lo-adult-fares.pdf
I had to make one tube journey last Tuesday and another the next day. I didn't know I was going to be in London until a few hours before.
According to your link, an oyster card costs £3 plus postage and has to be posted, taking 2-4 days. Then, tube tickets might cost £2.30 per single journey, but the card can only be preloaded with £10. So total £13+postage if I'd ordered it a week in advance.
It was a lot simpler, and cheaper in this case, to pay for two single journeys. (Normally I'd rent a bike, or just walk, but I wasn't in the mood this time.)
Compared with the OP's other costs (eg. £35 for parking), the cost of a full price ticket is not significant and less hassle.
None of the links I looked at said you can buy a oyster card at a tube station.
Even if that was the case, there are a number of tradeoffs to consider (like the minimum expenditure required to buy the card and preload it, and how many journeys are likely to be done, and whether you are likely to remember to bring it with you on the next visit).
An ordinary single is the simplest for one or two journeys, even if it costs a little more.
(I wonder if they've thought about just making standard fares cheaper? In Rome I can buy a one-way metro ticket for about £1.20 and it's good for 75 minutes, I believe for a combination of bus/metro stages.)
It probably would have been cheaper to buy a one day travelcard from a ticket machine, if not Oyster and they can be purchased there and then. I've bought an Oyster card for emergencies from behind a counter when I was in London, even though I live outside of zones 1-6 and pre loaded it with a fiver.
Few people pay cash fares, even if available, in London.
ETA. Where I live, I can buy a one day travelcard for about £11 (network railcard discount) at the weekends, which allows me a return trip between Luton and London, plus unlimited travel on the tube, buses, overground trains and the DLR within zones 1-6 throughout the day.
Or most new ticket machines can issue them according to a link I just read.
The idea is to stop people buying paper tickets hence why the price is rising so high.
If the Op has a contactless card they can tap that on the tube barrier and benefit from Oyster fares.
If was the OP, I'd park at Stanmore, get two Oyster cards or tap in with contactless. Tube to hotel, walk to RAH and back. See some sights and tube back to the car.
That last slog through London in a car is awful.
That actually seems a better alternative to buying one-way tickets (and to buying oyster cards). If I'd known about it I'd have used it earlier this week.
If you get there after 18.30, you'll be okay to park for free until probably 08.00 the next day.
The streets north of Oxford St. will be the same, George St., Bryanston St., Seymour St. etc.
A black cab from Marble Arch to RAH goes about 5.80 - £6.60, failing that take the Central Line from Marble Arch to Notting Hill Gate, then the Circle or District Line to Kensington High Street, then a 10 minute walk to RAH.
It's probably safe to walk back across Hyde Park, but I'd take a black cab, but remember, it will be on rate 3 after 10 p.m. it might be neare £10.40 - £11.20 to Marble Arch.
Apparently that's how much a single ticket costs, if you don't avail yourself of various cheaper alternatives.
I found out today (but haven't yet tried) that using a contactless card at a barrier will work and you pay the same fare as on an oyster card (£2.30 or £2.90 iirc), but use the same card to buy a paper ticket at a machine, and it will cost £4.80! (I didn't realise that paper was quite that expensive.)
the problem with contactless is there is no limit to the daily fares. With oyster, you can capped to a maximum amount per day regardless of the number of journeys. Contactless will keep billing you unless you reach your daily contact less limit which I think is around £20.
You can order oyster online if you want to do it before you travel, else you can get them at ticket offices.
I think it is £4.80 for a single journey ticket (in zone 1) if you pay with cash.
Hardly anybody uses cash nowadays - but if you do then it is £4.80 thank you very much.
If you have a contactless bank card then I would use that as opposed to faffing with an Oyster card - the costs are the same and it saves the hassle of having to think how much to top up, and having to buy the card itself.
You might as well use something that you have, rather than adding another item to your wallet and having it lurk in a draw with unused money or having to chase for a refund.
Their computer system calculates the fares and caps it at the appropriate rate for the day and also for the week, and you can also view the history online if you register your bank card.
As for driving into London - it's not as bad as people make it out to be, but it's certainly not for the faint hearted or nervous driver.
Parking in Central London is generally free after 18.30 in most places north of Oxford Street on weekdays & Saturday. Sundays are generally free all day - but always check the local restrictions on the signage and do not park in residents' only bays at any time as they apply 24/7 unless otherwise stated.
I never thought of it like that.
You don't though as you still have to get a ticket from the machine and put that through the barrier. So yes, you have to go to the machine to get your ticket but it doesn't take any longer at the actual barrier.
I couldn't even pay the £4.80 in cash as the machines only took cards. It was still £4.80.. (The first time I used the tube, a single fare was 6d, so it now costs 200 times as much.)
No, inserting a ticket into a slot doesn't take noticeably longer than using a card. And it wouldn't take any longer than a paper Travelcard.
You can still buy paper tickets (one day travelcards) from outside of zones 1-6 in the former NSE area and they are similarly priced to Oyster in terms of capping. For me coming from Luton it's a no brainer to buy a ODE, even if I'm only making one return journey within the zonal area. I haven't paid for a zones 1-6 fare with cash for the best part of 20 years.