Eye-watering fare rises will not solve TfL’s problems – they will only make them worse

The deal is done. The fix is in. Tube fares are going to rise by a whopping, inflation-busting 5.8 per cent next March. Nor is this a one-off hit for London transport users. TfL fares will rise by more than the rate of inflation (RPI + 1 per cent) every single year until 2030.

Nor can Londoners make a conscious decision to avoid higher fares by switching to their cars; the daily congestion charge is set to rise 20 per cent, helping TfL to net an extra £1billion a year in charges, tolls and fines. Even bus fares – previously capped in the capital – are expected to rise by 10p (to £1.85) a journey from July 2026.

That is the deal that Mayor Sadiq Khan struck with the government in the spending round earlier this year. He got a multi-year transport funding settlement (worth £2.2 billion), but in return, Londoners would bear the pain of eye-watering fare hikes year after year.

It is fair to say that the list of ways in which Khan is different from his nemesis Donald Trump is pretty extensive. But, based on this bargain with the devil that the Mayor of London has struck, it seems certain that no publisher would pay Khan an advance to write a book called "The Art of the Deal".

Despite the spin from City Hall, London’s funding settlement was not a great victory. Indeed, it was far less than the mayor was lobbying for. Whilst London secured £2.2billion for transport, Manchester got £2.5billion (part of a £15billion transport cash boost for mayors across the North and Midlands).

There was no progress on Crossrail 2, the West London Orbital expansion, or the Bakerloo extension to Lewisham. The DLR extension to Thamesmead is happening, but it is arguably the least economically important of all the major projects awaiting the greenlight (and it only yields 2 new stations and 1.9 miles of extra track, so is hardly a game changer for the capital).

Moreover, TfL and City Hall are likely set to fund most or all of the £1.7billion price-tag for the DLR extension themselves through developer contributions, fares and borrowing, nudging the GLA even closer to its borrowing limits. No surprise, then, that the Evening Standard, City AM, and The Economist all concluded that London had been “short-changed” in the spending round earlier this year.

The fact that the Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, used to be Sadiq’s deputy mayor for transport between 2018 and 2021 and previously served as a London MP for eight years emphasises just how bad the mayor must be at negotiating. He was unable to persuade a one-time political ally - who knows TfL and the challenges it faces inside and out - to back his vision for the capital’s transport network wholeheartedly.

These eye-watering fare rises will not solves TfL’s many problems. Gouging Londoners at the fare box will actually make many of those problems worse. As they pay more every journey or every travelcard renewal, Londoners will increasingly ask what, exactly, they are getting for their money.

Currently TfL’s target is to get passenger numbers back up to 94 per cent of pre-pandemic levels by 2030, but it is unclear if that is likely or even possible if fares continue to rise sharply. Whilst ‘working from home’ has had an impact, it is fair to say declining customer confidence is a factor too. TfL’s official statistics show that customer satisfaction fell from 86 per cent in 2016/17 to 78% in 2022/23 – the longest continual decline on record.

The mayor and TfL urgently need to reset their relationship with London’s hard-pressed travelling public. We are past the point where tinkering with travelcard discounts and marketing gimmicks offering marginal savings will attract passengers back to a dirty, decaying network in decline.

Farcical customer communications about major delays to introducing new trains – like having to deny the new Piccadilly Line trains are too big to fit in tunnels or that the new DLR trains can function in the rain – must end.

Virtue-signalling vanity projects like the rebrand of the Overground network (which cost £6.3million but did not add a single carriage of extra capacity, a single metre of new track or shave so much as a second off journey times) have to stop. A renewed emphasis on basic competence and credibility is desperately needed.

TfL needs to forge a new contract with Londoners. Excessive pay for senior managers needs to be addressed and lavish bonuses made contingent on improving customer satisfaction. Project management needs to be improved so that the DLR extension does not finish up four years late opening and £4billion over budget like the Elizabeth Line.

The twin epidemics of graffiti and fare evasion need to be acknowledged and tackled not denied, ignored or tolerated. Londoners are willing to pay a fair price for a transport network that is clean, safe and competently run. But a future where passengers are asked to continually pay more only to get less and less is unsustainable.

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James Ford is a political columnist for City AM and a former adviser on transport policy to Boris Johnson during his time as Mayor of London.

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