Crossrail: How Elizabeth line fares rip off Home Counties commuters to make London fares cheaper
You've probably been wooed by the Elizabeth line's sleek trains, frequent service and step-free access yesterday, but you might want to check your bank balance before you commit to it on a regular basis. The new cross-London railway line has one of the most intentionally complicated fares structures in the entire country. If you live within the Transport for London (
TfL» ) fare zones, it means you generally get the cheapest fare, but if you don't, the fares structure is set up with 'traps' which force you to cough up extra cash.
It's purposely designed to convince more affluent Home Counties commuters to spend more money with TfL, which needs not only to pay back millions in Crossrail-related debt, but to also fill a £1.9billion funding gap as it is not expected to be financially sustainable until April 2023. The fares policy is also inconsistent - not just in terms of what you pay, but how you pay for it, which differs depending on who you are and where you're trying to travel to. Confused? Yes and that's the point.
Much of the revenue model (how the line makes money) for the new Elizabeth line is based on abstracting revenue from existing alternatives, notably the Tube,
DLR▸ and parallel rail lines, some of which will be amended to make the Elizabeth line more attractive. For example, TfL forecasts that in 2031, of the 247.2 million journeys that will be made on the Elizabeth line, 37.1 million of them will actually be journeys that would have been made on the Central line originally - as the fares are the same over common sections i.e. Ealing Broadway to Stratford, that does not make TfL any money.
Instead, TfL hopes that people from the Home Counties (beyond Zone 6) will decide to take the faster, direct Elizabeth line to get across Central London, changing where necessary. It's planning that by 2031 over 60 million journeys will switch from
GWR▸ , Southeastern and
SWR» in particular to take the new route instead. As MyLondon reveals below, these people would indeed have easier journeys, but have to pay extra for it through a lack of ticketing options.
You can't use
Oyster▸ between West Drayton and Reading
This is the first ticketing constraint. If you want to catch the Elizabeth line at Reading, Twyford, Maidenhead, Taplow, Burnham, Slough, Langley or Iver, you cannot use an Oyster card. Instead, you have to use either a paper ticket or contactless. For many people, this is fine and the capping system will still save them some money, but as you cannot link a railcard (which offers a 30 per cent discount) to your contactless payment method, those who often have the least dispensable income, such as young people and the elderly, have to purchase a paper ticket.
Buying a paper ticket then creates extra problems for you. You cannot buy a paper ticket 'point-to-point' fare to any of the new stations on the Elizabeth line central section, meaning that if you want to travel between Twyford and Canary Wharf with a young person's railcard, you cannot - the fare does not exist. Instead you would have to either buy a paper Travelcard from Twyford or break your journey at West Drayton (the boundary of Zone 6) and then use an Oyster card. Real rail fares geeks will know that Travelcards tend not to be only around £4 more than the cost of a return ticket to Central London anyway, but Mayor Sadiq Khan is proposing to withdraw TfL services from the Travelcard Agreement, which would mean this option would cease to exist.
TfL says that it's due to technical reasons that Oyster is unavailable along this section of the Elizabeth line, as the nearly 20 year old technology simply could not handle the extra data. It is looking for other solutions, but as the Elizabeth line is already open any mitigation will come too late.
You must pay extra to travel to/from Heathrow Airport
This isn't a surprise given that trains between Paddington and Heathrow have always had a surcharge, however given the Elizabeth line is on the Tube map just like the Piccadilly is, you may assume they have the same fares, but they do not. Paddington to Heathrow costs £10.80 off-peak/£11.50 peak single on Oyster/contactless - a hefty premium of over £7 compared with the Tube, but usually cheaper than Heathrow Express. It will catch unfamiliar passengers out as signage and announcements about this premium are not always evident over the whole line or on trains.
Just like the Travelcard withdrawal mentioned above, City Hall has presented proposals to implement a Heathrow premium on Piccadilly line journeys between the airport and Zone 1. That would reduce the attractiveness of the alternative route and again push people onto the Elizabeth line. You can't buy a point-to-point ticket from outside the fare zones to the new
Elizabeth line stations
This is the biggest trap of all for the Home Counties. Go to any National Rail station outside Zone 6 with a National Rail ticket machine and try to type in one of the following destinations: Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Canary Wharf, Custom House or Woolwich. On some you simply can't and on others you are sold a Travelcard instead - you can test it out on the National Rail website now.
That's because the new Elizabeth line stations are not available as destinations for point-to-point tickets. If you live within the TfL fare zone area, that's ok because you can just tap in and out using Oyster or contactless, but if you don't you're forced to buy a Travelcard or split your journey. This will hit commuters to Canary Wharf as they won't have the option to buy a simple return ticket there from popular commuter towns just outside of the fare zones such as Gravesend, Guildford or Gerrards Cross. As TfL is now planning to axe Travelcards anyway, all of these people will eventually have to pay twice - once for their National Rail journey into the capital and then for the Elizabeth line.
For popular commuter journeys where you can't use Oyster but can use contactless (e.g. St Albans City-Canary Wharf, Reading-Farringdon, Welwyn Garden City-Tottenham Court Road), those with railcards are penalised as they cannot link them to contactless. Splitting your journey is also problematic as it can require you to touch in/out at the boundary station and boundary tickets aren't easily available, as is the subject of ongoing legal challenges potentially totalling £166million.
You can't use the Elizabeth line as a shortcut on many National Rail tickets even though it's a National Rail line
The traingeeks among us might say - hang on I can buy a National Rail ticket to travel to Paddington, Farringdon, Moorgate/Liverpool Street, Whitechapel and Abbey Wood anyway, so I'll just use the Elizabeth line as a shortcut. In many cases you'd be wrong. Unless your ticket has the route "Any Permitted", the asterisk/cross symbols (*/+) which allows you to cross London on TfL services anyway or a specific mention of a route "via Elizabeth line", you won't be able to use it.Fares are in the process of being changed so that journeys such as Gravesend-Farringdon become "via City Thameslink", which will force you to use the Thameslink via City Thameslink instead of the Elizabeth line via Canary Wharf. If you wanted to use the faster Elizabeth line, you'd have to split your journey using contactless/Oyster or buy a Travelcard, both of which will cost more, with the Travelcard set to disappear anyway.
There are additional fares being added to the system which will allow for return fares between Home Counties stations and 'London Zone 1' or 'London Zones 1-4' which will allow for travel to the Elizabeth line stations, but by not simply adding them as new stations, the fares remain complicated and penalising. If you live in the Home Counties, travel to London regularly and want to save a few quid, you should stick to the original cross-London railway line as much as possible - Thameslink, which offers point-to-point fares to the cluster of its Central London stations ("London Thameslink") and has weekday and weekend 'super off peak' tickets which offer significant discounts, all of which you can use a railcard for.
On a separate note, don't forget that many TfL bus routes have also been re-routed to encourage more people to use the Elizabeth line - with bus fares currently at £1.65 but no standardised fares for part-Elizabeth line part-bus journeys, this will also likely be a revenue boost for the transport authority. An Elizabeth line single journey in Zone 1 is £2.50.
There are also a handful of bizarre anomalies even within the fares on Oyster. Take Elstree & Borehamwood, which is in Zone 6 - the single fares on Oyster to Elizabeth line stations are seemingly random:
Paddington (Zone 1): £8.90 (peak)/£6.00 (off-peak)
Bond Street (Z1): £8.90/£6.00
Tottenham Court Road (Z1): £8.90/£6.00
Farringdon (Z1): £7.30/£4.50
Liverpool Street (Z1): £7.30/£4.50
Whitechapel (Z2): £8.90/£6.00
Canary Wharf (Z2): £8.90/£6.00
Custom House (Z3): £8.90/£6.00
Woolwich (Z4): £7.30/£4.50
Abbey Wood (Z4): £7.30/£4.50
In this case, a journey all the way across London from Zone 6, through Zones 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3 and 4 is cheaper than a journey just to Zone 1. It's also cheaper to go to Liverpool Street one station east on the Elizabeth line after changing from Farringdon than to Tottenham Court Road one station west despite being in the same zone (presumably a legacy of the Thameslink arrangement at Moorgate, but appears totally random).
If in doubt, always check
TfL's single fare finder as well doing your own research (split ticketing, your local train operating company's website or expert fares website
BR▸ Fares) to calculate what the best fare is for your journey!
