How to Plan UK Travel with TFL Journey Planner
TFL journey planner helps you make your travel plan for UK, covering all the major cities and location of UK. It does not matter if you already in Britain or outside, it is equally handful to all travelers- this is simply the best travel journey tool specialized for United Kingdom. This travel site provides information about rail, tube, tram, bus, coach, river, DLR. Tickets, latest travel news, getting around in London are only a few important info you may need in case you are not planning to lose in UK.
How to use TFL Journey Planner
Though the site TFL (transport for London) provides all the necessary information about traveling UK and its cities, but the most popular feature of TFL website is its “tfl journey planner” tool. To use this free tool you need to visit: http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk. When enter this journey site, you have to enter your “traveling from” and “traveling to” info. You can search for you transport by entering: station, post code, address, place of interest, departure date and time and then click the “search button”. For location help you can try out there area map and street map.
As an example of a journey summary I entered the following information into TFL site
- Departing: Monday 20 September 2010 at: 16:51
- From: Wallington
- To: Belle Vue Rail Station
See the result of this journey plan in below screen-shot.
As you can see tfl journey planner has resulted in total 7 routes to the destination of Vue Rail Station, Manchester. Now, you can select any route based on departure time, number of interchanges and duration of journey. To see your preferred route click on the “view” button and see a details journey plan with along with map for each station.
Advanced Options of TFL Journey
Need more advanced travel plan, and then use the advanced option of TFL journey planner. The advanced journey planner allows you to select the mode of transportation (train, bus, river etc.). You can pick the best route to suit your plan from a list of options like-quickest route, routes with least changes, routes with the smallest walking distances between stops. In addition, you can select if you have any mobility requirements if you don’t want to use any stairs, escalators, lifts and want to use only wheelchair accessible transport.
In case, you prefer to include cycling option in your journey plan, then you can select the options as- cycle only route, option of leaving bicycle at station, carrying bicycle on public transport. Do you want to include a few walking restrictions onto your travel plan? You have it all with TFL advanced journey plan. If you don’t like to longer than 10 minutes or more in your journey, then mention it and find a suitable route for you.
How to Search London Underground Tube/Train Timing
Oyster Card and Ticket Information
Information about tickets and fair is available at: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/
This link will let you about how to get Oyster travel card that you can use anywhere as an alternative to paper tickets. One can put travel card, rail cards. Oyster cards are delivered to 67 countries of the world, so if your country is listed in their list you can collect advanced ticket sitting in your home country, even before stating your journey. Average delivery time of this cared is 2 to 12 days. Also you can learn about how to get discount for adults and what fares student and children need to pay.
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Road Users Information at TLF journey planner
This section of TFL site provide information about cycle hiring, red routes and low emission zones Around central London you can easily travel with cycle. TLF provides all the information necessary on how to hire a Cycle and roam around. You can have a cycle from Barclays cycle hire for 1£ for 24 hour access fee of this scheme and then pay the charges on the basis of hourly usage, for example if you need a cycle for 6 hours only for a day, then you have to pay 35£ charges for 6-hour of usage and 1£ for accessing this scheme for 24 hours.
Most of the Greater London including Heathrow falls under low emission zone and most of the congestion charging zone are within the low emission zone. So, if you are travelling on any of this area you need to pay both congestion charge and LEZ charges
The Low Emission Zone (LEZ) covers most of Greater London. All roads (including those at Heathrow and the M1 and M4 motorways) fall within the zone. However, the M25 motorway is not included (even where it passes within the boundary).The daily charging period runs from midnight to midnight. This means that if you enter the zone before midnight and leaves it after midnight; you will need to pay for two days. Charges are paid daily basis, once you pay for a day, you can drive around that area for that day only.
TFL journey planner is one of its kinds if you want to planning travel around London. The best advice I got from this site is that if you don’t like to waste your time lining up in ticket queue, and then order an Oyster travel card when you are at your home, and use it as you go, no need to worry about buying advance ticket or anything else.
For travel planning, you might take a look at another interesting journey planning tool-rac route planner