To have not reasoned how expensive travel within London is!

[Flippingflamingo]

Niece started uni in London a few weeks ago and I offered to pay to keep her Oyster card topped up as my contribution.

However I have just discovered she has spent £27 on it from Monday to Thursday this week!!

I really want to be able to pay it for her, but it’s not sustainable for me to keep topping it up constantly.

I didn’t realise it was this much and thought there were daily caps on travel!

i thought that as well

Travel card cap is £10 per day!

There are caps but set way higher than that. My commute within oyster area was £12./day when I was doing it.
You’ll need to define your contribution- £20 a week or whatever you can afford.

There is a daily cap, but it’s about £10 so her costs don’t sound unreasonable.

There are caps but it’s £8.50 for Zone 1 only per day, peak time. So assuming she’s doing that, what she’s spent is reasonable. Not sure why you didn’t check first. I think London travel is pretty reasonable.

thats a good idea
limit your offer to £25 a week perhaps
are there student prices?

There is a daily cap but it's at least £10 a day on Oyster. Even the tram in Manchester is £7 a day

You could just offer a fixed amount a week of whatever you can afford?

Capped amounts from TfL;

Zones 1–3: £9.60
Zones 1–4: £11.70
Zones 1–5: £13.90
Zones 1–6: £14.90

How much did you think it would be?

Even down here in the south west I'm spending £12 a day on transport, so I don't think her £27 across four days is extortionate.

You need to have a chat with her, but I imagine she'll be quite upset that you're taking this away because you didn't research it properly.

It is capped and depends on what zones you travel through. Google will tell you what they all are but (and I haven’t had to travel in London for a while) the daily cap is around £8 for zone 1 increasing if you go between zones so that is still less than a daily cap for that number of days so it was always going to cost that is she is hopping on and off public transport all day.

Wow!! I travel to London quite a bit and had never realised noticed as we often walk places and don’t use the tube!

I’ve just done some reading and discovered the weekly cap is £32 so if I budget for that hopefully it will cover it!

which zone is she in? does she live in a different zone to her uni?

at least you know the limit now op, that's good

Has she got it linked to a young person's railcard? Unsure what transport she is taking but that will give you a discount on some

She needs to get a student travel card, that would give her unlimited zone 1-3 travel for £35 a week. Or if she’s just in zone 1 learn to walk more places!

I don’t think fifty odd quid a week for unlimited travel in central London and surroundings is expensive? Her £35 a week is good value too, here it’s more that that for a weekly bus tm ticket. Why didn’t you check before? What prices did you expect?

There is a student oyster.

Can she get a student card or is that not applicable to over 18s?
and yes - so expensive to use public transport everywhere I think

I think London travel is pretty reasonable, especially compared to other places in the UK

Are you paying for her to travel to/from uni or all her social travel too? Would it be easier to buy a weekly/monthly ticket rather than PAYG?

arent bus prices £2 per journey?

Where does she live? When I lived in London in my 20s I cycled all over on a crappy old mountain bike.

So much fun, I can't tell you how wonderful it is to cycle past all the landmarks. You get to know the city and see way more. The tube makes you think distances are longer than they really are. Keeps you fit, and the bike lane infrastructure is so good now. You can still take tube for longer journeys or very rainy days.

You might be better off getting her a bike!

I don't think that's too expensive. Especially if you have to get multiple buses/tubes/trains. Just over £6 a day.

my dd also cycled , it is very popular in london

I didn't realise that there was a weekly cap of £32....are you sure that is right, Op?

It's pretty reasonable. Even out here it's £2 a bus, train is £5.30 into the city one way. £27 for 4 days seems cheap