London is famous for its red double decker buses and its Underground of Tube trains. It’s an excellent system, despite how Londoners like to moan about it. True, tube trains do seem to break down a lot and buses do get stuck in traffic jams. But normally, getting from point to point in London is pain free.

If you have an Oyster card, a single trip from zone 1 to zone 2 during peak time costs £2 (AU$4.60). That’s one trip — not a two hour pass, not a return. If I took the tube to and from work, it’d cost me $9.20 every day. A monthly ticket is £89 (AU$207).

On the other hand, a bus trip at any time of the day and through any zone costs £0.90 (AU$2.05). It takes me about fifteen minutes extra to get to work (50 minutes door-to-door, compared to 35 minutes). I can handle that. I haven’t yet had any luck with buses coming home during peak hour. Buses get stuck in traffic jams.

The pattern I’ve settled into is to take the bus to work in the morning and the tube back home in the evening. I get off one stop early so that I limit my travel to Zone 1. A zone 1 trip costs £1.50 (AU$3.45) instead of £2. I walk about 15 minutes to get home from Zone 1, instead of 8 minutes from my local zone 2 station.

I guess I could travel to work from a zone 1 station as well. Therefore, my daily bus adventures are only saving me £0.60 (AU$1.40) a day. Darn! I thought I was saving more than that. I’m saving about £12 (AU$28) a month — that’s enough for one dinner out in town.