Long time lurker and reader of the forums, love this community and learning about all things rail.
Finally had a reason to create an account and post
Just moving down to Hove from London and going to be commuting in, want to make sure I am not missing any obvious fare savings
Planned communte 2 days per week, looking at getting
Outbound
05:52 train from Hove and then changing east Croydon for Thameslink into St Pancreas
Return journey
St Pancreas to Hove changing again at east croyden leaving around 17:00ish
Going to buy a National Railcard, as this does seem to make some savings when searching around, plus split tickets,
Total = £47.60 per day of travel, am I missing anything obvious? Aware there are Thameslink only tickets, but not found they are saving anything
Welcome to the forum!
Brand restrictions and routes
Legally speaking, tickets cannot be restricted by brand - only by operator. Govia Thameslink Railway Ltd (GTR) operate services under four brands (Southern, Gatwick Express, Thameslink & Great Northern). Therefore a "Thameslink only" ticket is valid on all services operated by GTR, whatever their brand. There is an ongoing class action lawsuit regarding people being overcharged or wrongly issued with Penalty Fares - see
here.
Apart from the usual direct route, other valid routes from Brighton towards London include travelling via Hove or Lewes. Accordingly, a ticket routed "Thameslink only" would be valid for you to travel from Brighton via Hove on Southern-branded services - and as flexible tickets allow you to break your journey (i.e. get on or off at an intermediate station) you can start your journey at Hove.
Cheapest 'easy' option
Having looked at the options, it would therefore likely be cheapest for you to start your journey with a
Brighton to Gatwick Airport Anytime Day Return, routed "Thameslink only" (£15.90), and take the 05:52 from Hove as far as Gatwick Airport. You'd exit with that ticket (you could get this as a paper or eTicket) and then re-enter by touching in with an Oyster card or Key smartcard with
KeyGo set up, which you'd also use to touch out at St Pancras.
The 05:52 from Hove is scheduled to arrive at Gatwick Airport at 06:27. TfL advertises that off-peak PAYG fares are charged if you touch in at any time before 06:30, but in reality there is a
5 minute grace at the start of the morning and evening peak periods - so you can touch in as late as 06:34 and still benefit from the off-peak fare. The 05:52 is generally quite punctual, arriving at Gatwick within 5 mins of its scheduled arrival time
94% of the time, so it's highly likely you'd be able to touch in at Gatwick before 06:34 (especially once you get to know the station layout).
The big benefit of this is that the off-peak PAYG fares from Gatwick to St Pancras are really cheap,
costing only £10.70 (see the default fare). On your way back home, you'd buy an
Anytime Day Single from St Pancras to Gatwick, routed "Not Underground". In theory this should be discounted to £10.05, but as you are travelling on a weekday and the Network Railcard has a minimum weekday fare of £13, you would pay £13. As you would using a pre-purchased ticket rather than PAYG, you would not need to touch out at Gatwick on your way home - you can change at East Croydon, Gatwick or wherever else you fancy.
In total that would cost you
£39.60 per day. The one potential wrinkle is that your "Thameslink only" ticket
might not be accepted by the barriers at Hove. They usually accept Brighton tickets, but I'm not sure if they distinguish based on if they're "Thameslink only", on the basis of the purported (unlawful) brand restrictions. If your ticket is rejected by the barriers then I appreciate it might be a lot of hassle to argue the toss with the barrier staff every time you travel, so you might prefer just to walk/drive to Brighton station and catch a train from there for an easy life.
Cheapest 'clever' option
If you want to save even more money then you could consider buying an annual season ticket that gets you an Annual Gold Card. The cheapest qualifying season ticket is between
Hatton and Lapworth (two adjacent stations in Warwickshire), which would cost £212 per year. The benefit of an Annual Gold Card over a Network Railcard is that it can be added to an Oyster card to get a 1/3 discount on off-peak PAYG fares and caps - so your Gatwick to St Pancras morning journey would
cost just £7.10. It would also mean that you get the full 1/3 discount for your evening ticket from St Pancras to Gatwick, as there's no minimum fare for the Annual Gold Card (it's just not valid before 09:30), reducing that to £10.05.
If you bought a Hatton to Lapworth season to get a Gold Card, your commute's cost would then reduce to £33.05 per day. If you compare the marginal cost of a Hatton to Lapworth season vs a Network Railcard (an extra £177 a year) and divide that by 47 weeks a year of commuting, the
average daily cost works out at £36.82 which is still a fair bit cheaper than the above option.
There are also some retailers that offer cashback when you buy tickets too - many Amex holders currently have a 5% or 10% off offer for buying tickets through LNER or Avanti, similarly with many MasterCards. However these offers come and go, so you can't always rely on them being available. That said, with LNER, you can also get cashback on e-voucher purchases, which you could use throughout the year to pay for your tickets even when an offer isn't currently available.
Oyster and KeyGo
In terms of deciding between Oyster and KeyGo for the morning journey, it's worth noting that Oyster cards can be set up to top up automatically when they fall below a certain balance, so you don't need to top up manually. Contactless would offer you the same morning off-peak fare until 06:34 as Oyster, but you can't apply a Railcard to your contactless card - only to an Oyster card (you have to go to an Underground station to get it set up).
KeyGo charges either TfL's PAYG fares or regular single/return fares, whichever is cheaper (including Railcards, if you set up a Railcard on your account). However I'm not sure it would apply the same 5 minute off-peak grace period, as I believe it works out which train you likely took and then looks at its scheduled departure time and works out what ticket/PAYG fare is applicable to that, rather than purely working on touch in times as per TfL's system. Maybe one to try out on your commute?
If you didn't manage to touch in at Gatwick by 06:30/06:34, with Oyster/contactless you would be charged the peak PAYG fare of £19.20. With KeyGo you would be charged the
£15.10 Anytime Day Single as that is cheaper, so if you miss the 06:34 cutoff you would be better off touching in with KeyGo than Oyster/contactless. So perhaps best to carry both your KeyGo card as well as your Oyster card.
I appreciate that's a lot to take in but hopefully it gives you an idea of what to look into
