Originally Posted by WHBM
The Oyster gives significant reductions on single cash fares. For example a bus fare in Central London is £1.50 cash now, whereas Oyster is only 80p off-peak, and £1 peak. Oyster does off-peak reductions you cannot do on normal cash fares. Likewise a suburban Underground journey is £3 cash but only £1 with Oyster.
Once you have made several journeys you get to the stage where it would have been more efficient to have the relevant one-day Travelcard. Oyster works this out and the "price cap" comes into play at that point, in fact at 50p beforehand.
I've been traveling to London about once a year on vacation for several years now, and it's always been a challenge to figure out which travelcard or other type of payment to use. This year, it looks like they've simplified that decision a lot with the elimination of a discount visitor travelcard (from what I can tell, the 1-week visitor travelcard is the same as the regular 1-week travelcard except that you can only purchase it from a foreign address) and the substantial Oyster card discounts.
Were these changes made recently? They definitely weren't in effect during my last trip (March 2005), so I'm assuming they are a fairly new initiative.
Also, does anyone have experience with using an Oyster card as a non-resident? It seems as though they've simplified the whole process quite a bit (i.e. no photocard requirements for adults execept for season passes), so it sounds like I can easily purchase a card when I get off the plane. Is it actually as simple as it sounds? If so, it will be great not to have to worry about purchasing any of our travelcards, etc. in advance in order to get the best deal.
I tried to set up an Oyster card account on the on-line site so that I could pre-order our cards and pick them up at Heathrow when we arrive, but it looks like the site is for UK residents only. Can anyone confirm this? I was just thinking that it would be handy to be able to check our card balances and top them off if necessary before heading out on future trips.