Bad news for those who love collecting physical mementos, gig tickets, and travel memories, because one-day trips into London may soon no longer come with a cute orange ticket to remember them by.
The handy travelcards, which offer unlimited journeys across TfL are supposedly being withdrawn by the Mayor of London from January 2024. This is in a bid to raise an extra £40 million a year for the transport network.
If the ticketing format is withdrawn, no further Day Travelcards would be sold or accepted by TfL. The Campaign for Better Transport have launched their ‘Don’t Cut The Card‘ campaign and have recently published figures that show the impact this would have on families travelling into London for the day.
These figures estimate that a family of four traveling form Chelmsord would now have to pay £81.60 instead of the previous cost of £71. Meanwhile a family traveling from Bishop’s Stortford who would have previously paid £68, would now be paying £81.05.
What can you use instead of Day Travelcards?
The removal of the Day Travelcards will mean that travelers will have to buy a National Rail ticket and then use a contactless card or Oyster card to travel on London’s public transport. This will make it more difficult to access child fares and other discounted fares.
Those who used a National Railcard to purchase discounted Day Travelcards can add their Railcard to their Oyster and still benefit from travel discounts.
Children can use a Zip card or add a Young Visitors discount to an Oyster, to enjoy reduced PAYG fares. Child rate single and return tickets would also remain available.
As a student I often travelled in to London from Royal Holloway – in a journey not unlike Penn Badgley’s character purportedly did in You’s fourth season. As such, I have bought many a Day Travelcard in my time. There’s now a certain amount of nostalgia attached to them. Now that I live in London, though, I haven’t bought one in years. But I know how convenient they were to me then, and likely still are to others now.
Be sure to have your say on the proposal here.