TfL’s £39,000 ‘intrusive staring’ campaign

Making his way home from Westminster the other night, Mr S was intrigued to see a new series of eye-catching posters on the Tube. ‘Staring’, it screamed ‘Intrusive staring is a form of sexual harassment and will not be tolerated.’ It’s part of an ongoing campaign by Sadiq Khan’s Transport for London (TfL) to get commuters to behave better: hardly surprising given that more than 19,000 crimes were recorded on the capital’s public transport last year.

Given TfL is effectively broke post-pandemic, Steerpike wondered just what this all cost. And now, following a Freedom of Information request, it transpires that the transport body has spent a total of £135,500 on poster advertising to tackle sexual harassment on public transport since its latest campaign launched last October. This includes ‘seven poster executions covering a range of behaviours: staring, touching, exposing, cyber-flashing, cat calling, pressing and upskirting.’ To date, TfL has displayed 6,709 staring posters across its network, at a cost of £39,488.