London Underground ticketing

The London Underground uses a mix of paper and electronic smart-card ticketing.

Single Tickets
The fare structure for paper single tickets was simplified in January 2006. From January 2007 all journeys excluding zone 1 cost £3, and all journeys including zone 1 cost £4 no matter how long or short the journey. Fares for single paper tickets have been set deliberately high in order to encourage users to use either Travelcards or Oyster pre-pay fares, which are substantially lower (by up to £2.50 per journey) than paper tickets.

Return Tickets
Return tickets are sold at twice the price of a single ticket. A Travelcard is often cheaper than a return ticket and will automatically be provided by ticket machines and ticket office staff if it is cheaper than the return fare.

Travelcard
Daily, three-day, seven-day, monthly and annual Travelcards are also available, allowing unlimited rides in two or more zones on the London Underground and most other forms of transport in London, including most National Rail services, bus|buses, Tramlink and Docklands Light Railway. Travelcards are also available for 'odd periods' of between one month and a year.

Most regular travellers use Travelcards, and they are substantially better value for money than single tickets for anyone making more than a couple of journeys a day. Off-peak Travelcards, also known as "Day Travelcards", are sold only after 09:30, and a Peak Day Travelcard is also available at a higher price. Many shops, usually newsagents, sell bus passes and Travelcards; these are identified by a "Ticket Stop" sign, usually in a door panel or front window. A Day Travelcard is valid until 04:30 on the day after the date of issue.

The number and combination of zones is restricted depending the type of travelcard. Travelcards for only one zone are not sold.

Ticket Issuing Systems
Cubic Transportation Systems, Inc., known as Westinghouse Cubic Ltd until April 1997, has manufactured all of London Underground's ticket machines since 1987. Tickets are sold from staffed ticket offices at stations, and from various types of self-service machines. The name for the system as installed from 1987 is "UTS" (Underground Ticketing System), though this system has been enhanced and extended recently, most notably since 1998 under the Prestige initiative, where Oyster smartcards were introduced.


 * Ticket Office Machines (TOM): the system used in ticket offices. Now PC-based, replacing an earlier bespoke machine. The first machine at a station is numbered 01, with subsequent machines being numbered upwards from there.
 * Few Fare Machines (FFM): also known as Tenfare. Self-service machines with only ten buttons, representing the most common fare types from that station. Machines do not accept credit or debit cards. Machines are numbered from 10 upwards.
 * Multi Fare Machines (MFM): also known as Allfare. Self-service machines with touch-screens for all destinations on the London Underground network, offering a very wide range of tickets and Travelcards. Numbering goes upwards from 30.
 * Queue Buster Machines (QBM): also known as Quick Ticket Machines (QTM). Smaller, wall-mounted, touch-screen machines installed initially at a larger Zone 1 stations, and subsequently at other locations. These accept credit and debit cards, but not cash. Machines are numbered 36, 37, 38 or 39.
 * Advance Fare Machines (AFM): Self-service machines with touch-screens. They are refurbished Fewfare machines with the functionality of a Multifare machine. Machines are numbered from 29 downwards where possible.

FFMs and MFMs give change, but only MFMs accept paper money. Tickets from TOMs, FFMs and MFMs are identical, apart from the window/machine numbering, but tickets from QBMs are slightly different, with bolder printing and a slightly different font. The QBM uses thermal printing, whereas others use impact print.

In the Travelcard illustrated below, 0762 on the bottom line represents the National Location Code of the issuing station (in this case, West Ruislip), and 30 represents the first (and, in fact, only) MFM at that station.

As a result of fares being set on a zonal basis, single or return tickets do not show a destination station - they display an 11-character abbreviation of the origin station name. Between 1987 and 1994 (when the layout of tickets was redesigned), up to 16 characters could be used for the name.

Penalty fare and fare evasion
In addition to the automatic and staffed ticket gates at stations, the Underground is sometimes patrolled by the uniformed staff who mainly stay at the ticket barriers, and very occasionally by plain-clothes ticket inspectors equipped with hand-held Oyster card readers. Passengers travelling without a ticket valid for their entire journey are sometimes required to pay a £20 penalty fare or face prosecution for fare evasion. Oyster card pre-pay users who have failed to 'touch in' at the start of their journey are also considered to be travelling without a valid ticket.

Touts at stations can often be seen attempting to resell used Day Travelcards that they have been given by passengers who no longer need them. Transport for London strongly discourage this, officially stating that Travelcards are 'non-transferable' and thus invalid if resold. Underground staff and inspectors very occasionally confiscate tickets that they know to have been resold, and may require a passenger using such a ticket to pay a penalty fare. In an attempt to reduce the numbers of Travelcards being used by more than one person, an experiment took place at Brixton station in 2002. A box was provided at the station exit into which passengers were encouraged to deposit Travelcards that were no longer required, and for each ticket deposited London Underground made a small donation to local charities for the homeless.