Go to any tube station at rush hour in London. Literally any. Then wait by the barriers and watch. Within 60 seconds it’s likely you’ll see at least half a dozen young men (it’s almost always young men) barge their way through the barriers without a care in the world. No one is shocked anymore because it happens with such depressing regularity. Paying commuters stay silent – as do the hapless high-viz clad Transport for London staff watching on. I’ve frequently seen fare-dodgers mockingly wave at TfL staff, safe in the knowledge they are powerless to stop them.
As a daily commuter on the underground, I reckon every tenth person passing through my local tube station in Oval doesn’t bother to pay. Most just shoulder-charge through the barriers. Some athletically jump over them. Others tailgate behind us mugs who still insist on paying our own way. In a city where crime is becoming ever more flagrant (I had my phone snatched out of my hand in broad daylight just before Christmas), fare-dodging on the underground is the most barefaced lawbreaking of the lot. And yet no one, least of all Sadiq Khan, seems to care.
In December 2024, a Freedom of Information request was submitted to Transport for London. It sought data since 2010 on: the number of recorded instances of individuals pushing through barriers; the number of prosecutions of such individuals; the cost to TfL of tackling fare evasion through enforcement; and the estimated loss of revenue to TfL caused by fare evasion. All pretty reasonable questions if you ask me. And yet TfL’s response was to argue that collating such data would be too expensive, and therefore it was unable to provide the relevant information.
What was completely absent from TfL’s response was any acknowledgement that the reason the cost of collating such data is so high is because fare-dodging has been allowed to spin out of control. The last official analysis of fare evasion on London’s public transport network is from 2022/23, where it was estimated to cost the taxpayer roughly £130 million a year, and account for 3.9 per cent of all journeys on the capital’s tubes, buses and trams. Those figures seem conservative, at best. But even if you take them at face value, surely they show that a serious effort to clamp down on fare-dodging would save tens of millions at the bare minimum?
The penalty charge for fare evasion is currently £100, reduced to £50 if paid within 21 days. But the size of the penalty is almost immaterial, because almost every fare-dodger knows they’ll never have to pay it. And in the remote event they do, the cost of the fine will barely make a dent in the hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds worth of free journeys they’ll have stolen over the years. The only effective deterrent is to make the barrier jumpers realise they can’t get away with it in the first place.
Here’s an idea: let’s take a leaf out of New York’s book. The ‘broken windows theory’ was famously espoused in the 90s by police commissioner Bill Bratton and mayor Rudy Giuliani. It popularised the notion that targeting minor crimes, such as vandalism, loitering, public drinking and – yes – fare evasion, would create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness. And it worked. Both petty and serious crime fell significantly in New York as a result. As such, it’s not outlandish to suggest that a zero-tolerance approach to fare-dodging would actively help the Metropolitan Police in its efforts to tackle more serious crimes.
No one is shocked anymore because it happens with such depressing regularity
Why can’t we have two police officers stationed by the barriers at every major tube station in the capital? They could keep particular watch over the ‘wide aisle’ tube gates – designed for passengers with luggage, pushchairs or in wheelchairs – which close slowly and are often targets for tailgaters. The moment they spy someone shoulder-charging through the barriers or vaulting over the ticket gates, they can pounce. Ideally the detained fare-dodger will scream, shout and make a public spectacle of themselves – providing a much-needed morale boost for the capital’s law-abiding commuters looking on.
I am fed up with fare-dodgers on the tube. It is costing London’s taxpayers millions. It creates a culture of lawlessness that now pervades the capital. But most of all it offends the most basic British sensibility of fair play. Why should I pay £3.40 to travel from Oval to London Bridge when thousands of my fellow Londoners travel for free? If Sadiq Khan wants to end his time in City Hall with even the smallest of achievements to his name then he should get serious about fare evasion. It would stop me feeling like a mug, for starters.
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