Transport for London reckons it is losing £190m per year in unpaid fares – and the Wimbledon to Beckenham tram network is the worst of all the capital’s services for fare dodgers
Fare evasion on Croydon’s trams is twice as bad as the rate across all of Transport for London’s services.
Open system: tram passengers are trusted to tap-in before their journeys. Not all of them bother
And there are almost three times as many fare dodgers on the trams as there are on London’s buses.
That’s according to figures published today by TfL, who say that fare evasion is costing them – and law-abiding Londoners – around £190million per year.
“Fare evasion impacts TfL’s ability to invest in and maintain a safe, secure, clean, and reliable service,” the transport authority says.
According to TfL figures, fare evasion for 2025-2026 on Croydon trams averaged at 7.3% – or close to 1-in-14 passengers using the Wimbledon to Beckenham network. In the fourth quarter of the year (the three months to April 2026) the fare evasion rate hit 7.7%.
This compares badly with the overall average fare evasion rate across all TfL services – Tube, buses, DLR, Overground and Elizabeth line – where the annual average is 3.5%.
London’s buses are where the most honest travellers – or most effective fare controls – are to be found, with a 2.6% fare evasion rate for the past year.
The fare evasion issue on the trams is a systemic one: passengers are only required to tap in on tram stop platforms. There are no gates or ticket barriers, and no staff as passengers board the trams to check their payment, as there are on most buses.
TfL fare evasion rates by transport mode, 2025-2026
The figures for fare evasion on the trams is actually worse than the previous 12-month period.
Overall, the number of checks and penalty fares issued by TfL is up significantly on 2024-2025: “The crackdown on fare evasion is part of a bold strategy…”, “bold”? Really? “… to tackle fare evasion across all TfL services, with the goal of driving down the rate to below 1.5% by 2030-2031.”
TfL says that their enforcement teams “operate across the entire transport network, day and night, carrying out ticket checks and using technology to identify anyone travelling without the correct ticket or having paid the correct fare.”
TfL says that it…
- issued 69,001 penalty fares last year, a 9% year-on-year increase
- checked 6.9million contactless payment cards, a 50.6% increase
- generated £5.4million in Revenue Inspection Charges from people who did not have a valid Contactless Payment Card for their journeys – a 141.6% increase from last year
- checked 3.3million bus passengers, 400,000 more than last year
- there were 14,406 convictions for fare evasion on TfL this year, 955 more than last year
- as a result, court awards have risen by 24.6% to £2.6million
TfL did not provide figures for the number of tram network fare checks conducted.
“TfL continues to tackle blatant fare evasion, such as gate-pushing, and enforcement officers have reported 4,428 individuals for possible prosecution during last year. This type of behaviour creates an intimidating atmosphere for staff and customers and increases the risk of work-related violence and aggression for customer-facing teams,” TfL says.
Tough stance: Siwan Hayward of TfL
TfL is increasing the number of its Transport Support Enforcement officers by 50, with 36 of these officers working night shifts.
“Increasing the number of accredited enforcement officers who can refuse entry and remove people from stations and deploying them to locations with high gate-pushing rates lowers the risk of work-related violence and aggression for frontline staff,” TfL says.
The overall fare evasion rate of 3.5% is down from 3.9% the previous year.
On the trams, the 7.3% fare evasion rate is marginally worse than the 7.2% in 2024-2025. In 2023-2024, the tram fare evasion rate was 8%.
“The overwhelming majority of passengers pay the correct fare, and it’s unfair that a minority avoid paying,” said Siwan Hayward, TfL’s director of security, policing and enforcement.
“That’s why we are strengthening our capability to detect and deter fare evasion, as shown by the significant increases in enforcement activity across our network – from more customer ticket checks to more officers on the ground and higher levels of revenue recovered.
“Fare evasion is not a victimless crime. It robs Londoners of vital investment in a safe, frequent and reliable transport network. We are committed to ensuring that those who evade fares face the consequences of their actions, and that the cost of fare evasion is paid by the evaders, not our fare-paying customers.”
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How do they work out the number not paying, if those people are not being recorded? Are they just extrapolating from the people they do catch?
Strikes me that the c7% fare evasion rate on the trams means more fare dodgers are caught on that mode of Transport for London than any other, arguably a good thing