Does the new Flexi season ticket actually work for anyone?

[JagerPlease]

Like probably many other people, I've been WFH during the pandemic, and will soon be going back to the office, but on a less frequent basis than pre pandemic.

The Flexi season ticket seemed like the perfect answer to reducing commuting costs.

On paper, I am the exact target market - I work compressed hours over 4 days and need to go back to the office 50% of the time. So the exact 8 days in 28 that the Flexi ticket is for.

However. To get a years coverage you need 13 Flexi tickets. For me, 13 Flexi tickets is a whopping £6 cheaper than an annual season ticket. And obviously, an annual ticket can be used as much as you want, for leisure as well as commuting. If I'm really strict about bunching annual leave I could go down to 12 Flexi tickets, saving a further £260 over the year.

If I then hypothetically consider myself as someone on my route who needed to go to the office more, I would actually just be out of pocket on any calculation. A monthly season ticket is £53 more than the Flexi season, but a day return is £48. So if you need to travel 10 times in a month, Flexi plus day return is more expensive. (And a weekly season ticket is cheaper than 2 day returns)

There's obviously lots in the media about people who are similarly disappointed, which makes me wonder, is there anybody out there who will actually be benefitting from the Flexi season tickets?!

You don’t seem to be able to get one that includes Tube travel either, which makes it less attractive for some commuters coming into London.

Works out cheaper for me to just get an annual ticket.

I haven’t done the annual calculation, but a Flexi season ticket is only 20% cheaper than a full month’s season ticket.

I think they really should have priced it at about 2x the weekly season ticket cost. Then that would have made it more attractive.

I commuted to London 3 days a week for years. It was cheaper to buy an annual season ticket, which used to annoy me enormously as obviously I was paying a much higher proportion of my salary on travel than an equivalent full-timer.

I'm retired now so it's too late for me to benefit, but I did hope that the new flexi tickets would have sorted out this unfairness. It seems like a real lost opportunity.

Yep, will be about £200 per month cheaper for me. Could be worse.

Feels like you need a spreadsheet to work it out

I looked into it, and it seems it only works out cheaper if you do 2 days each week, rather than more days compressed, such as 4 days every 2 weeks, which then means it's cheaper to get weekly tickets. I work 3 days a week, so it's no good for me anyway, so I'll stick to buying a monthly, which as you say, has the benefit of allowing use for leisure on other days.