(mellow upbeat music)
- If this is your first time visiting London,
here are 10 important things you need to know,
before taking public transport.
If you know them, you'll be golden.
By the way, if you're new here, I'm Jess
and I make videos for people, who are coming to visit London
and I've a special freebie for you at the end of the video,
so keep watching.
(mellow upbeat music)
No public transportation in London takes cash,
so here are a few ways that you can pay for your rides.
First up is an Oyster card, get one of these, top it up,
retop it up, when you need to and that's it.
You can also use your debit or credit card,
if it has the contactless feature enabled on it
or if you have a card from outside the UK,
sometimes the contactless feature
and MobilePay doesn't work,
so I usually recommend for people
to just get an Oyster card,
it's the easiest way and the most reliable.
You need to tap in and tap out.
When you're taking a train or the Underground in London,
you always have to make sure
you tap in at the first station you get on at
and tap out at the station, that you leave at,
this is because you get charged
depending on how much distance that you traveled.
Most of the time, you're gonna hit barriers
to get into the station and out,
so you'll know that you need to tap in and tap out,
but sometimes at night, they leave the barriers open,
so make sure you still tap in and tap out,
even if that happens.
Rush hour is major in London,
so try not to travel on public transport
at those times, if you can,
you will avoid major crowds and major traffic,
try to walk, if you can.
If you need to avoid steps, when getting around London,
the buses are always going to be your best bet,
because they're equipped with ramps
and wheelchair accessible seating.
You'll also see on every Tube map,
that the accessible stations are marked off.
If you have other accessibility needs,
I've left some links down in the description of this video
to other resources, that will help you out.
London's transportation system has a daily cap,
which means if you travel a lot around each day,
you will only be charged a certain amount,
how much you get charged depends
on how many zones that you've traveled through
and if you don't know what zones are,
you should watch the video
that's popping up here in the corner,
that will tell you all about how zones work.
If you're using an Oyster card
and you need to check how much balance you have,
there are two ways to do it,
the first is to use one of the ticket machines in a station,
or when you tap out at a barrier,
you'll see the amount of credit
that's left on your card flash up.
Here's how to stop a London bus,
if you're waiting at the bus stop
and you see your bus coming, put your hand out
and it will tell the driver to stop.
If you're already on the bus
and you need to get off at the next stop,
press the red stop button
and it will tell the driver that you wanna get off.
The Tube runs until midnight from Sunday to Thursday,
but select lines and Tube stations
are a part of the Night Tube,
which means they're open all night Friday and Saturday.
To figure out which stations
and which lines are part of the Night Tube,
you can open up the Night Tube map,
also Citymapper and Google Maps are smart enough
and they know which ones are open,
when you're trying to get home.
Finally you'll get the hang of it,
honestly if you know these tips, you'll be totally fine
and after a couple of rides in the system,
you will be a pro, plus us Londoners
mess it up all the time, so don't worry.
If it's your first time visiting London,
you should get my free London 101 Guide,
it tells you everything you need to know
before you get here,
click the link in the description to get that
and for more tips and tricks for London,
click one of the videos, that's popping up over here.
Oh, okay, ooh, a bird.
Wait for your rides, ooh!
- [Cameraman] I got it. (gasping)
Did you get that?