Transport for London (TfL) spent over £14m tackling fare dodgers on London’s Tube last year, but recouped just £638k for the effort.
According to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, the transport body spent around £14.2m on a “revenue enforcement team” on the London Underground and a further £7.7m enforcing fares on bus services.
However, only around £638,000 in dodged Tube fares was returned to TfL. On London’s buses, the figure was £707,272.
The total expenditure figure is likely higher given that TfL did not record how much was spent on the Elizabeth Line, London Overground, or the Tram network, where enforcement is outsourced.
Overall, fare evasion on TfL’s network dipped slightly from 3.9 per cent to 3.8 per cent in 2023/24 even though the total number of journeys jumped to 300m.
“We take fare evasion extremely seriously and we try to ensure that wherever possible fare evaders themselves, not fare-paying customers or taxpayers, pay the cost of fare evasion,” a TfL spokesperson said in a statement.
“We know that our revenue protection work is a cost effective investment which provides an important deterrent to potential fare evaders and helps ensure that around 96 per cent of our customers do pay their fares correctly.”
TfL said fare evasion was stripping “vital” revenue from its coffers that could be reinvested in the wider transport network.
“Fare evaders are also often intimidating or abusive to our colleagues and to our customers, and the harm they can cause is much greater than simply the missed cost of a ticket,” it added.
It comes as the operator grapples with continued financial issues and lower passenger numbers stemming from Covid-19. Journeys have recovered in the last year but are still yet to reach pre-pandemic levels, and TfL has relied on over £6bn in government bailouts since 2019.
Despite hitting an operating surplus earlier this year, TfL has warned it still doesn’t have enough cash to invest in infrastructure upgrades seen as vital to improving performance on the likes of the Bakerloo and Central Lines.