Changes

Public transport ([http://www.tfl.gov.uk/ Transport for London]) is ridiculously expensive in London and there are plenty of ways to avoid paying for it (of course it's at your own risk!). Look out for the new bendy buses, where you don't have to pay the driver.  As See specific article for travelcards you can buy a child one for £2 (at time of writing), which will get you through barriers on the tube. In the evenings, you can often pick them up off the floor outside stations or buy them from a tout for a pound or two. At British Rail stations you can often buy a 'permit to travel' for 5p when the ticket office is closed, which means if you get caught you will only be charged the fare of your journey and not fined (the penalty fare is a steep £20 at present). ===Oyster card===The [http://www.tfl.gov.uk/ [Transport for of London]]'s policy in the recent years has been the elimination of normal paper tickets ("cash single fares") and replacing them with so-called '''Oyster''' cards. The cash fares are now a lot more expensive than tickets on Oyster (a bus fare costs £2 on paper, and only £0.90 on Oyster; the off-peak tube travel within the first six zones varies from £1.50 to £2 on Oyster, but is fixed at a steep £4 for a paper ticket.) An Oyster card is a smart (RFID) card which you need to touch on the reader at the gates/station platform/bus when you travel. It can be charged with two types of tickets: a period travelcard (one week or more), or a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) balance. As a hitch-hiker, you are most likely to need the latter option. In order to obtain an Oyster card or top it up, go to any London Underground ticket office or any ticket shop (most likely any corner shop near an underground station will do.) It costs £3 (refundable when you return the card to any London Underground ticket office). In London Underground you can also top-up using special machines. An additional benefit of the Oyster card is the price capping: the system does not charge you more than you would have to pay for an equivalent day travelcard, minus 50p. For example, a peak one-day travelcard for zones 1-4 costs £9.40. If you make a lot of journeys in a day within these zones, the system stops charging you once you've spent £8.90. ====Travelling by bus or tram====When travelling by bus, you usually touch the reader next to the driver ''at the start of your journey only'' (touch ''in''). In bendy buses there are also readers by the middle and rear sets of doors - these are the most popular among people not paying for bus travel. In double-decker buses the middle doors are for exit only, and you won't be let in through them. If you travel by tram, you need to ''touch in'' on the platform, except Wimbledon station which has gates. The ticket inspectors are not always present on trams. ====Travelling by Tube or DLR====When using Oyster PAYG, you need to ''touch in'' before travel - at the gates if they are present, or at the station platform if it does not have gates (Kensington Olympia, stations north of Queen's Park and most DLR stations). At the end of your journey you ''touch out'', the system calculates how much you've travelled and charges you accordingly. If you do not touch out, you get charged a "maximum cash single fare" (also known as the Entry Charge), which was £5 in 2007, but is likely to increase with the introduction of zones 7,8 and 9. You will be charged the Entry Charge if you do not ''touch out'' within 90 minutes of ''touching in'', or you enter a station and exit the same station again without touching out elsewhere. ====Travelling by National Rail====Please note that as of January 2008 '''very few National Rail stations accept Pay-as-you-go on Oyster'''. The full list can be found [http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/oysteronline/5823.aspx here]. If the station you are travelling to does not accept pay-as-you-go, it is likely that it has no ticket barriers either. Most stations and trains within the Greater London boundary have a penalty fare policy, which means you cannot buy a tickets on the train, unless it was impossible to obtain a ticket prior to travel - i.e. the ticket office was closed (or absent), or the ticket machine was out of order. In these situations you must obtain a "Permit to travel" from a Permit to Travel machine - you can just throw a 5p coin into it and get this permit.