Oyster Gold Card spreadsheet update

I’ve updated the Oyster v Gold Card spreadsheet (see January’s post) to take account of the apparent (or at worst, expected-at-end-of-May) availability of Gold Card discounts on Oyster PAYG off-peak fares.

It’s, er, a little bit complicated:

In essence, last night’s guide still stands, but there are some notable exceptions, even to the already complicated rules:

• If you’re doing both halves of a return journey after 10am in a single zone (other than Zone 1) and at least one half of your journey starts between 16.00 and 19.00, it’s cheapest to buy a paper return with Gold Card discount.
• If you’re doing a return rail journey after 9.30am between Zones 1 and 6 or Zones 2 and 6 (in either direction), it’s cheapest to use Oyster (with Gold Card discount enabled) even if one half of the journey falls in the evening peak (16.00-19.00).

The latter point assumes that a pair of post-9.30am journeys between Zones 2 and 6 are capped at £3.40, and a pair of post-9.30am journeys between Zones 1 and 6 are capped at £5.00, as suggested by the TfL fares guide.

Apart from these exceptions, the rules set out last night still appear to apply, but if you want to check your own combination of singles or returns, download the Excel file and have a look at its two sheets (Single fares and Return fares) for yourself.

You can download it here (Excel 2007 format)

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