How depressing is it when you think about the amount of money that comes out of your yearly salary, only to go into your travel costs? Yep, that same city transport that gets you to work… to pay for more travel to work. If you’re lucky enough to own a car, it’s not just petrol you need to worry about, it’s all the maintenance and tax on top of that. And if it’s public transport you opt for, then it’s the ridiculous cost of the yearly bus, tube or train pass.
Eep. And no, shut off your brain before you start thinking about taxis for nights out!
After hearing about my friend’s struggles with affording a tube card in London, I thought it was time to look into how to save money on city transport so you can save it for something nice, like some gorgeously affordable updates for your home. So get ready for a guide on how to travel on public transport or in a taxi on a budget; just look for the section you use to find a great selection (if I do say so myself) of tips!
Contents
How To Save Money On City Transport If You Take Public Transport
You can save a bundle by just opting to take a bus or train over a car, but I know those day tickets can really add up. And let’s not even think about the tube, if you’re unlucky enough to need it in London…
How To Save Money With A Bus Pass
This is a pretty obvious one, but worth saying because I know someone who went without a bus pass for a month or so. You know who you are.
Taking Bristol as an example, a day ticket here is £4.40 for an adult in the Inner Zone. A month’s ticket is £66, which would save you £22 over the course of the month, and that’s if you only used the bus Monday-Friday! Finally, a year ticket is £650, with a potential saving of £406 over a day ticket (again, only being used Monday-Friday and not including you using it on weekends).
So, although there’s nothing that can really reduce the cost of the bus pass itself (other than a student or children’s card), it can save you so much money compared to a singular ticket. If you don’t have a pass yet, and you can’t quite afford the yearly pass, then at least take this as a reminder to upgrade to the monthly one.
How To Save Money On The Tube
My London living friends have told me, time and time again, that there isn’t really any way to save money on the tube. Yes you can buy an annual pass, but who has over £1500 spare to fork out in one go for that?! Most people I know just get a monthly Travelcard because, honestly, even though it costs more in the long run it’s the only one they can afford to keep paying for.
There is a way around this though.
Commuter Club
Commuter Club is an awesome new company that basically buys the annual Travelcard for you. You can then pay them back for it monthly, and even though they add a small fee on top, this still works out significantly cheaper than paying for a monthly Travelcard from Transport London.
Here’s an example of how much you could save monthly.
The best bit is you can cancel at absolutely any time without paying a penny. If you decide to move, or you take time out of work, you’re not stuck with an annual Travelcard you’re not planning on using. You still keep the savings, there’s no cancellation fee, you just send back the card to CommuterClub and you’re sorted.
How To Save Money On Train Travel
Yep, the best way to save on regular city transport if you take the train is the same way you can with the bus; get a season ticket. If you’re past the age of getting a railcard there’s no real way to save on a season ticket, just make sure you plan out any absences like holidays to ensure you’re not paying for days you’ll be away. You can always buy a certain number of months, go away, and then buy the remaining months you need – although this can sometimes be more expensive than a yearly ticket so you do have to do some maths first!
However, there are some sneaky ways to get some savings if you have more one-off trips to do. And I don’t just mean the obvious booking in advance.
Ticket Splitting
The best way is to do something called ‘Ticket Splitting’. This is when you split up a train journey into parts and pay separately for those different parts, although you’ll be on the same train for them. Say I wanted to get a train from Bristol to York for an event, I’d split the ticket by:
- Searching for the direct Bristol –> York train, and noting down which stations it stops at.
- Checking to see if a ticket from Bristol –> one of these stops and then another ticket from this stop —> York was cheaper together than one single ticket for the journey.
This is completely legal, as long as you stay on the train for all the stops (which you’d be doing anyway, presumably). But because searching for the price of each stop is so time-consuming, not many people bother trying it out. Luckily that’s been made so much easier by The Trainline and Money Saving Expert; take a look at their Tickety Split page. You can enter any journey, and it’ll tell you whether you’d save money by splitting it up.
In my Bristol to York example, the Tickety Split page told me I could save over £20 by getting one train from Bristol to Cheltenham, then a second from Cheltenham to York. All on the same train of course! It’s certainly worth putting any journey into this before you book it, just to see if there are any savings to be made.
How To Save Money On Taxis
No budget city transport guide would be complete without a good nod of the hat to Taxis. I mean, you probably know which taxi company by you is the cheapest and they don’t often have vouchers, so I’m going to change this up a bit and talk more about two companies that are trying to make taxi lifts easier and cheaper.
GetTaxi
GetTaxi is a free app (although you can use it on your computer if you want to) for iPhones, Androids and Blackberry phones. You can use the app to easily book a taxi at any time, in a number of places across the UK, without paying a penny. There’s no cancellation fee, you can book in advance, and the black cabs used are all licensed and undergo thorough training, so you won’t be worrying about getting a dodgy cab after a great night out.
Now, I wanted to point out GetTaxi because of how frustrating I find paying in cash for things. Sometimes you end up needing a cab and realising, too late, that you’ve got no cash on you. I don’t think I’m the only one who’s had to sit through a cab journey that’s had to detour, and eventually cost more so that a friend could jump out and use a cashpoint…
If you’re sick of fumbling in the dark for cash, then you’ll be happy to know that you can pay by card through the GetTaxi app for any of their taxi journeys. Pretty handy right? And that way you can tell your friends exactly how much they owe you for the journey the next day just by checking your bank account.
Uber
Everyone seems to know about Uber by now. Hailed as the cheap alternative to Taxis, Uber are cars driven by ordinary people (but all verified by Uber). You can order them through an app, similarly to GetTaxi, but right now they’re only operating in selected cities.
The price of using Uber in Birmingham. This is their basic car range.
What both Uber and GetTaxi have in common is that you can use their apps to track where your taxi is, so you’re never left wondering when it’ll arrive.
It’ll depend on the individual pricing of the taxis on GetTaxi as to which is cheaper to use, but with both companies only running in certain towns right now, you might be forced into using one or the other depending on your location.
And that’s it for how to save money on public transport. Have you got any hints or tips you think I’ve missed? Let me know in the comments below, or over on Facebook or Twitter, and if they’re exceptional I’ll add them on.
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