The barrier to better transport in London? Our Mayor's attitude to fare-dodgers

Is there a more infuriating sight in London today than TfL staff ignoring blatant fare dodging, as pushy thugs barge through the barriers right under their heavily unionised noses?

- BY ROSS KEMPSELL

Fare evaders bashing through the Tube gates is now a common sight — or indeed a common sound, since the machines go berserk as they ram through them. I can’t be the only traveller who feels like I witness this on nearly every journey. It used to be the case that subtle tailgaters would linger a little too close for comfort and leap through the barriers just as you tapped your payment card — ah, that classic, sneaky tactic that defined the fare evaders of yore. Such conduct seems almost quaint by modern standards. In Sadiq Khan's London of 2025 you can simply smash through the barrier with impunity like an international rugby forward and get away with it scot-free.

Official statistics bear out the scale of the problem. As The London Standard reported this month, the cost of fare evasion on the TfL network as a whole is now £190 million a year. That's up nearly 50 per cent from two years ago. While the rest of us law-abiding folk cough up for higher fares (set to increase every year by at least one per cent above inflation for the rest of the decade), what exactly are the fat controllers of TfL doing to tackle fare dodgers and bring them to justice?