Calls for taller ticket barriers to cut fare evasion

London Conservatives have called for taller ticket barriers and dedicated fare evasion squads at stations to help reduce ticket evasion.

Almost one in 20 Tube passengers dodges fares at a cost of £130 million annually, according to figures released by Transport for London (TfL) earlier this year.

TfL spent around £14.2 million cracking down on fare evasion on the tube network and a further £7.7 million on the bus network in 2023-2024, collecting £1.3 million in penalty fees.

Fare evasion fell from 3.8 percent to 3.5 percent in 2023-2024, the transportation provider said, adding that its “data-driven strategy” to solve the problem is “already making an impact.”

But Thomas Turrell, the Conservative Party’s transport spokesman at the Town Hall, told the BBC that TfL’s target of reducing ticket evasion to 1.5 per cent by 2030 was “not going to happen”.

“Every Londoner has watched someone crash or jump barriers to avoid paying their fare, knowing full well that these people will bear the cost of the offender’s failure to pay in the form of eye-watering fare increases,” Mr Turrell said.

According to Elly Baker, chair of the London Assembly transport committee, there was a recent cross-party report focusing on improving safety through better staffing, but the Conservatives chose not to put recommendations into that report.

In May, shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick personally went to the London Underground to catch fare dodgers on camera. He said: “It’s frustrating to watch so many people break the law and get away with it.”

In a video published on the social media platform X/Twitter, he was seen questioning passengers who crossed the barriers without paying a ticket. A man who claimed he was carrying a knife was verbally abused and issued with a warning.

To crack down on fare evasion, TfL has deployed 500 enforcement officers to reduce the number of tube passengers who do not pay.

In a statement responding to Mr Turrell, TfL said: “We are strengthening our efforts to detect and deter fare evaders, including expanding our team of professional investigators, focusing our enforcement teams on locations where people coming through doors are common, and using the latest technology to target the most prolific fare evaders on the network.”