[tialaramex]

London is special.

Literally.

Take bus companies. You don't say if you used any buses, but if you did they all work the same in London, they're all painted red, they take Oyster (your Apple Watch will work), the system keeps track and lets you use more than one to get to your destination without special fees. There are a bunch of bus companies in London, but there's no reason you would care about that, they're all the same to you.

Everywhere else in the UK is forbidden from doing that. In my home city for example there were four major bus companies, each painted their buses a different colour, each used separate tickets, each had its own "integrated" travel pass system. If I caught a 20 out of the city, then boarded a U6 that's two separate journeys with two separate companies, and thus two separate charges and the city government is legally prohibited from telling them to knock it off and just charge a single fee like London.

[mytailorisrich]

Even where there is a single (or 2) bus company, the ticketing structure is often crazy complex.

Fares webpages for Oxford:

https://www.oxfordbus.co.uk/fares-and-tickets

https://www.oxfordbus.co.uk/zone-tickets

[johneth]

> Everywhere else in the UK is forbidden from doing that.

Thankfully this seems to be changing. Greater Manchester, through its devolution in the last few years, has in the last few months started the 'Bee network',[0] which operates similarly to London's bus system. It's being brought in in phases.

Hopefully other areas start doing this too.

[0] https://tfgm.com/