‘Every Londoner has watched someone push through the barriers or jump over them to avoid paying the fare’
Transport for London (TfL) must introduce taller barriers at Tube stations, train specialist enforcement staff and deploy new technology to crack down on fare evasion, the City Hall Conservatives have said. Fare dodging in the capital currently costs the transport network £190million a year, recent figures have suggested – equivalent to 3.5 per cent of all fare income and 4.8 per cent of all journeys.
TfL say they are increasing checks at station barriers and on trains, but the Conservative Party on the London Assembly urged them to treat limiting revenue loss from evasion as a “priority”. In a new report, entitled “Stolen Millions: How Fare Evasion Robs London”, the Tories said that enforcement is currently “inconsistent and fragmented” between TfL, the British Transport Police (BTP) and the Met Police.
They also said frontline staff currently lack “empowerment and direction”, meaning they do not intervene when they see fare dodgers and often let them go unchecked and unchallenged. As a result, the party said, other low-level crimes have been normalised and public confidence in TfL is “eroding as honest passengers feel penalised while offenders act with impunity.”
The report makes 10 recommendations to stop the bleeding, including deploying AI-enabled ticket barriers and a city-wide awareness campaign promoting civic responsibility. Barriers should be installed at every single entrance point across the TfL network, and eventually all barriers should be replaced with taller models make it harder to jump over, crawl under, or push through them.
Other measures include training up special TfL staff with the direction to challenge offenders and creating a Mayor-led “Fare Evasion Task Force” to coordinate efforts across different bodies.
Conservative Assembly Member Thomas Turrell, the party’s transport spokesman who authored the report, said: “Every Londoner has watched someone push through the barriers or jump over them to avoid paying the fare, knowing full well that they will be picking up the cost of the offender’s non-payment in the form of eye-watching fare rises.
“It’s just not good enough, and Sadiq Khan continues to pay lip service to the problem in spite of the concern Londoners have when using the tube. It’s not good enough, and Londoners are fed up with watching this happen unchallenged. It doesn’t have to be this way – a better London is possible.
“The Mayor can’t bury his head in the sand on this – the solutions are right there, in black and white for him to read, and excuses will not be enough. Conservatives have had to drag him kick and screaming to addressing this issue, and we’re not going to stop until change happens.”
His report claims London is performing far worse than other major global cities in tackling the scourge of fare evasion. It notes that evasion on the New York City Subway fell by 26 per cent following increased police presence and random inspections, with a similar story in Paris following enhanced enforcement.
In Stockholm, “higher fines for non-compliance and a culture of accountability have complemented technological solutions” to reduce evasion from 3.1 per cent in 2019 to 2.3 per cent in 2023.
“In places like New York, Paris, and Tokyo, decisive leadership, strong enforcement, and modern technology have brought fare evasion under control. London, by comparison, has drifted under a Labour Mayor more interested in political messaging than practical solutions,” the report reads.
Fare evasion on the TfL network has long been a focus of the national Conservative Party, with Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick filming videos confronting offenders to spread awareness of the issue.
A TfL spokesperson said: “Fare evasion is a criminal offence and robs Londoners of investment in safe, clean and reliable public transport.
“That’s why we are strengthening our efforts to detect and deter fare evaders, including expanding our team of professional investigators, focusing our enforcement teams on locations with a high prevalence of people pushing through gates and using the latest technology to target the most prolific fare evaders across the network.
“Our data-driven strategy to tackle fare evasion is already making an impact, with the pan-TfL fare evasion rate dropping to 3.5 per cent from 3.8 per cent in 2023/24. The strategy we now have in place will help us bring down fare evasion even more and ensure more persistent evaders face justice.”
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