Elizabeth line fare to Heathrow

[FPK]

Hi everyone,

I've been reading along here with interest for a while, and now I'm asking my first question—hopefully someone can give me a quick answer!

How much does a journey on the Elizabeth line to Heathrow cost if I've already reached my £8.90 daily cap for Zones 1–2 on my oyster?

Also, what's the minimum credit required on an oyster card to take a trip to Heathrow on the Elizabeth line, effectively taking the card to the maximum negative balance?

Thanks very much for your help—much appreciated!

 

[Watershed]

Welcome to the forum. You have two very good questions, but it's not necessarily straightforward to work out the answer!

Higher-than-usual single fares apply between Heathrow and other stations when using the Elizabeth line. Nevertheless, Heathrow is in Zone 6 so the daily zonal caps still apply - and often limit the cost of journeys to Heathrow as the single fare from stations like Bond Street to Heathrow (£13.90) is nearly the same as the daily Zone 1-6 cap (£16.30).

So, assuming you're talking about travelling from (or via) Zone 1 to Heathrow you would be charged the difference between the Zones 1-2 cap and the Zones 1-6 cap. That'd be £16.30 less £8.90, i.e. £7.40.

If you don't have any sort of Railcard applied to your Oyster card (i.e. it's just a plain adult Oyster card) then TfL's back office system analyses all journeys you made at the end of the day. Depending on the exact journeys you make, it's possible that you would be given a small refund the next time you touch in.

This would happen if the system works out that it would have been cheaper to charge you for a mixture of different zonal caps and extension fares, rather than just a single cap covering the highest-numbered zone you travelled in. TfL don't really publish the cost of extension fares, so it's a bit of a guessing game, but the good news is that it wouldn't cost you any more than the above.

In terms of the minimum credit, if you are touching in somewhere in Zones 1/2 and have already reached the daily cap, my understanding is that you don't need any particular amount of credit for the barriers to open. Your balance can't be negative though. Your balance will go negative if you don't have enough money to cover the cost of your journey to Heathrow (such as the difference between the Zones 1-2 and 1-6 caps), but that's fine - you just have to top up before you make your next journey.