Fare zones
London Underground and Docklands Light Railway use Transport for London's Travelcard zones to calculate fares, including fares on the Underground only. Travelcard Zone 1 is the most central, encompassing an area mainly bounded by the London Terminals and the Circle line, while Travelcard Zone 6 is the most outlying zone within the Greater London boundaries. It includesTicket machines
American transportation system company Cubic Transportation Systems, known in the UK as Westinghouse Cubic Ltd until April 1997, has manufactured all of London Underground's ticket machines since 1987. Tickets are sold from various types of self-service machines; London Underground progressively closed all its station ticket offices in 2015-16. The name for the system as installed from 1987 is "UTS" (Underground Ticketing System), though this system has been enhanced and extended recently, most notably since 1998 under the Prestige initiative, where Oyster smartcards were introduced.Summary of ticket types
The following tickets are/were available from London Underground, Docklands Light Railway and Transport for London ticket agents for use on the Underground and Docklands Light Railway: Detailed information on tickets and pricing is available from thTicket types
Single tickets
The fare structure for paper single tickets was simplified in January 2006. Fares for single paper tickets have been set deliberately high in order to encourage users to use either Travelcards or Oyster pre-pay fares, which are substantially lower (by up to £2.50 per journey) than paper tickets. Return tickets are sold at twice the price of a single ticket. A Travelcard is often cheaper than a return ticket and will automatically be provided by ticket machines and ticket office staff if it is cheaper than the return fare.Travelcard
Daily, seven-day, monthly and annual Travelcards are also available, allowing unlimited rides in two or more zones on the London Underground and most other forms of public transport in London, including most National Rail services, buses, Tramlink andOyster card
In 2003, Transport for London launched the Oyster card. It is a proximity card, which on buses, trams and on the Underground allows a traveller to touch the card on one of the yellow readers positioned on the automatic entrance and exit faregates rather than feeding it through a card ticket reader. Unlike card tickets, the Oyster card is not disposable, and value - either 'pay as you go' balance or Travelcards - can be added to it at computerised ticket machines and at ticket offices. Where pay as you go credit is used, the cost of each journey is deducted from a stored balance. As of October 2005, weekly, monthly and annual Travelcards issued byContactless
Contactless Visa, Maestro, MasterCard and American Express debit and credit bank cards, as well as contactless enabled smartphones and smartwatches using Apple Pay and Android Pay are accepted for travel on London Underground, London Overground, Docklands Light Rail, most National Rail, London Tramlink and Bus services. Operation of the system is exactly the same as the Oyster smartcard; customers should touch their card on the validation devices (entry/exit gates, passenger validators) at the start and again at the end of their journey to ensure the correct fare is paid. Only adult, non-discount, "Pay As You Go" fares are available with Contactless payment cards. Travelcards may not be loaded onto a Contactless payment card as they may be with Oyster. Unlike Pay As You Go on Oyster (where the stored value held on the card is adjusted as the passenger touches their card as they enter/exit stations or board buses), transactions made with Contactless payment cards are processed by a central processing system. The total charge of all travel accrued throughout a day is settled overnight, meaning that a customer will see one transaction for each day in which they have travelled on their credit card or bank statement. Daily travel charges are settled directly against the customer's debit or credit card account; no "topping up" is required. Like Oyster, Contactless implements daily capping, whereby the customer pays no more than the price of an equivalent daily Travelcard. Unlike Oyster, Contactless also offers "Monday-Sunday Capping", whereby the combination of products that gives the "best value" is selected (from a range of single fares, extension fares, daily and weekly Travelcards) to ensure that the customer never pays more than is necessary for their travel. The customer does not have to know their travel plans in advance. Monday-Sunday Capping is distinct from an Oyster 7-day Travelcard in that the latter may be purchased on any day of the week, whereas Monday-Sunday Capping "lapses" at the start of the travel day on Monday. More information is available from thPenalty fares and fare evasion
In addition to the automatic and staffed faregates at stations, the Underground also operates on a proof-of-payment system. The network is sometimes patrolled by the uniformed staff who mainly stay at the faregates, and very occasionally by plainclothes fare inspectors equipped with hand-held Oyster card readers. Passengers travelling without a ticket valid for their entire journey are sometimes required to pay an £80 penalty fare or face prosecution for fare evasion. Oyster pre-pay users who have failed to 'touch in' at the start of their journey are also considered to be travelling without a valid ticket and are liable to a penalty fare if caught; otherwise they are charged the maximum fare upon touching out at the destination station. Touts at stations can often be seen attempting to resell used Day Travelcards that they have been given by passengers who no longer need them. Transport for London strongly discourage this, officially stating that Travelcards are 'non-transferable' and thus invalid if resold. Underground staff and inspectors have the authority to confiscate tickets that they know to have been resold and to require a passenger using such a ticket to pay a penalty fare, although this is rare in practice since proving a ticket has been resold can be a difficult and time-consuming process. In an attempt to reduce the numbers of Travelcards being used by more than one person, an experiment took place at Brixton station in 2002. A box was provided at the station exit into which passengers were encouraged to deposit Travelcards that were no longer required, and for each ticket deposited London Underground made a small donation to local charities for the homeless.Ticket machines
London Underground ticket machines in all stations support the following 17 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Polish, Punjabi, Tamil, Turkish and Urdu. Prior to 2009, some ticket machines were multilingual; they supported six languages and those machines had English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Japanese. The new languages were added as part of the Investment Programme of LU.London Underground unveils more languages at ticket machinesReferences
External links
{{Portal, London transport