TfL crackdown on graffiti on the London Underground is costing £11MILLION so far

The annual cost of cracking down on graffiti covering London Underground trains is £11 million.

Transport for London (TfL) commissioner Andy Lord said they had seen an ‘increase’ in the labeling of tube carriages, especially on the Central and Bakerloo lines.

Last month, in response to a Freedom of Information request, TfL said staff were working tirelessly to remove ‘a tag every three minutes on average’.

Speaking to the London Assembly’s budget and performance Committee, Mr Lord said: ‘We are working very closely with British Transport Police and our own investigation teams to identify and prevent hotspot locations, particularly where people are accessing trains.’

During the summer, it was revealed that cleaners were cleaning more than 3,000 spray-painted stickers from subway trains every week.

In July, Mr Lord said TfL’s enforcement teams were taking photos of the tags before removing them in a bid to find and prosecute those responsible, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Mr Lord noted that the vast majority of affected trains were cleaned while out of service, but some were done internally during operation.

The commissioner urged the public not to take train cleaning into their own hands, adding that guerrilla cleaners “may also cause unintentional damage, putting themselves at risk.”

Joe Reeve led a group of volunteers cleaning graffiti from trains on the Bakerloo line in London

A London Underground passenger sits in a graffiti-covered Bakerloo Line carriage in June

It comes after a group of unofficial volunteers became so enraged by graffiti-covered carriages on the London Underground’s Bakerloo line that they took matters into their own hands to clean them up.

The team, led by 28-year-old Joe Reeve, posted videos of their cleaning duties on social media and received praise from TfL train drivers and passengers who thanked them for their efforts.

Mr Reeve, founder of the policy group Seeking Growth, is critical of London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan, saying he is ‘just doing what Sadiq Khant does’.

Speaking of wider concerns about the state of the tube, he told The Standard: ‘I use the Bakerloo line every morning and I see someone breaking through the barrier.

‘Then when I get to the subway, I see that every carriage is full of graffiti. It feels like no one is doing anything to make the city better. I’m quite patriotic.

‘I love London and I think it has to be the best city in the world. ‘I had the option of moving to the US for work but I want to stay in the UK and see things get better.’

He added: ‘Sadiq has been mayor for some time and has said in his videos that he is proud of what he has achieved. ‘I and a lot of people are pretty frustrated with him.’

In October 2024, TfL’s first new Piccadilly line train was covered in graffiti just hours after arriving in London and a year before it entered service.

The test train, transported from Siemens’ factory in Vienna, was one of 94 new trains built to replace the 50-year-old fleet as part of a £2.9 billion upgrade of the underground.

The act of vandalism is said to have occurred in the early hours of the morning of October 14 while the train was at Latchmere railway junction near Clapham.

In October 2024, TfL’s first new Piccadilly line train was covered in graffiti just hours after arriving in London and a year before it entered service.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan was on the first Night Underground train on the Victoria line in August 2016

A graffiti vandal who caused £130,000 worth of damage to the London Underground in November 2021 claimed he was ‘creating a job for the person who cleared it’.

Bacari Adams, 33, was caught red-handed when officers discovered his favorite tag matched the one tattooed on his knuckles.

Dozens of trains and stations were damaged by Adams, resulting in a total of 77 crimes; all of these were processed in the city railway system.

British Transport Police officers first began investigating the 33-year-old in 2016 by interviewing people who said they had seen someone trespassing on the railway and tagging trains and other property, sometimes in the middle of the night.

Once enough evidence was gathered, Adams and 31-year-old Jake Martin were arrested at their home in December 2018.

Officers said their phones contained definitive evidence, including images of vandalism that they kept as trophies.

Text and WhatsApp messages were also found showing they were planning further vandalism to trains and railway property.

In an interview with police in January 2019, Adams admitted the offenses when he was shown CCTV footage of him writing his tag on the London Underground train.

Bacari Adams, pictured, was jailed for six months after being convicted of 77 offenses relating to graffiti attacks across London over two years.

He said: ‘I’m sorry, I won’t do it again. I can’t deny that you caught me red-handed, only a fool could deny that.

Adams, of Enfield, was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment at Inner London Crown Court on Wednesday, October 13. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to damage or destroy property.

Tottenham man Martin also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 months in prison, suspended for 18 months.

Damage to the railway amounted to £133,817.