Ticket promotions will not lure passengers back to London's failing transport network

The mayor needs more Londoners to use the transport network. Transport for London’s (TfL) draft business plan includes an assumption that passenger demand will enjoy ‘steady growth’ across all modes and demand will reach 94 per cent of pre-pandemic levels by 2029/30. However, whilst the Elizabeth Line continues to outperform expectations, the opposite is true of the rest of the network. TfL has seen a catastrophic drop in bus passenger numbers while London Underground passenger numbers have missed targets and demand on the DLR is also down.

TfL’s travel demand assumptions are, therefore, looking shaky to say the least. The mayor has decided to allocate £20 million from the City Hall budget to explore ‘fares innovation’ to see if discounts and price promotions can arrest the fall in passenger numbers.

Whilst the temptation is to blame low passenger numbers on the legacy of COVID and the move for employees to work from home for some or all of the week, the evidence suggests that there are myriad other factors at work as well. Customer satisfaction with TfL has dropped steadily in recent years (from 86 per cent in 2016/17 to 78 per cent in 2022/23 – the longest continual decline on record). In 2023/24 just 54 per cent of Londoners surveyed agreed with the statement that “TfL cares about its customers”. And yet, despite growing dissatisfaction amongst farepayers, the Mayor is pushing ahead with eye-watering fare rises each year until the end of the decade. According to TfL’s own estimates, these fare rises are set to cost Londoners an extra £168 million every year. These are serious, sustained price increases that passengers will feel every time they top up their Oyster card.

Many passengers no longer feel safe on the transport network. In 2025, sexual offences on London Underground averaged 2.6 assaults per day, the highest level for five years. So we should not be surprised that an online petition pushing for women-only carriages received 15,000 signatures last year. And it is not only women and girls that are experiencing anxiety when travelling. According to TfL surveys, in the first half of last year, 39 per cent of passengers reported that they had felt worried whilst using the capital’s transport network. Nearly 1 in 10 Londoners said they had been deterred from using public transport (either temporarily or permanently) after experiencing a ‘worrying incident’ on the transport system. Other factors driving passengers away include TfL’s inability to get a grip on graffiti (which costs £11 million a year to clean up) or fare dodging (which currently costs TfL £190m a year in lost revenue).

I suspect that, deep down, the mayor knows this initiative is doomed to fail. Normally, Sadiq Khan is not shy about loudly announcing major policies, not just via press releases but often with accompanying videos and a blitz of social media coverage. But not this time. Despite its £20 million price tag, this bid to woo passengers back was hidden away in the bowels of the TfL budget. Compare that with the mayor’s £4.5 million crackdown on mobile phone theft, which, despite costing barely one quarter of the taxpayer funding allocated to this ticketing experiment, warranted an op-ed on this site authored by the mayor himself earlier this week. Maybe this is a soft launch. Maybe a full City Hall propaganda barrage will follow in due course. Or maybe this is an initiative quietly sent out to die.

Why would City Hall know that this latest wheeze is destined to disappoint? Because we have been here before. In 2024, the mayor ran a 13-week trial offering cheaper fares on Fridays. Despite costing £24 million, that trial failed to boost passenger demand. Failing to learn from that flop suggests that the mayor is now throwing good money – your money - after bad.

Marketing gimmicks, marginal savings and short-lived promotions will not lure passengers back to the tube. If you are being gouged every time you top up your Oyster Card, you are unlikely to feel the benefit of slightly lower prices on Fridays. Shaving a few pence off the odd fare here and there will not render graffiti invisible. If you have been harassed, groped or assaulted on the tube, then a buy-one-get-one-free offer is not going to make you feel safer. The Mayor would be better off using his £20 million to fund better enforcement across the transport network. That will restore public confidence, make the network more appealing and convince passengers that TfL is on their side.

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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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