Mayor steps in and announces he’ll freeze TfL fares this year, easing cost of living for millions of Londoners

Friday, 19 January 2024 07:46

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan is allocating £123m of GLA funding to freeze TfL fares until March 2025 Millions of Londoners set to benefit from the Mayor’s bold action, with potential savings of up to £90 a year. In contrast, national rail fares are going up by 4.9 per cent With record numbers of commuters using pay as you go, compared with Travelcards, the freeze will help more Londoners than ever as the cost of living continues to...Request free trial

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan is allocating £123m of GLA funding to freeze TfL fares until March 2025

Millions of Londoners set to benefit from the Mayor’s bold action, with potential savings of up to £90 a year. In contrast, national rail fares are going up by 4.9 per cent

With record numbers of commuters using pay as you go, compared with Travelcards, the freeze will help more Londoners than ever as the cost of living continues to soar

The Mayor says it will put money back in people’s pockets, and also be a boost for London’s culture, retail and hospitality sectors

New analysis shows that fares set by the Mayor in 2024 will be 14 per cent lower than if they had risen in line with national rail fares, and 21 per cent lower than if they’d risen in line with RPI since 2016

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has today announced bold action to freeze TfL fares this year, to support Londoners struggling with the cost of living and London’s recovery from the pandemic. The Mayor is proposing £123m of additional funding to TfL, identified as part of the GLA budget setting process, to freeze fares for a whole year at a crucial time when Londoners are being hit by inflated food costs and soaring energy bills.

New analysis shows that TfL fares set by the Mayor in 2024 will be 14 per cent lower than if they had risen in line with National Rail fares, and 21 per cent lower than if they’d risen in line with RPI since 2016.

If TfL fares had increased in line with national rail fares, they would have increased by 4.9 per cent this year alone, but the Mayor’s decision to freeze TfL fares will put an estimated £123m back into the pockets of Londoners. Today’s announcement follows the Mayor’s decision last week to extend funding for free school meals for state primary school children for another year.

The Mayor previously froze TfL fares from 2016 until 2021, before the restrictions imposed on TfL by the Government’s funding conditions duringthe pandemic. As London emerges from the pandemic, the Mayor is freezing TfL fares once again, to get even more people onto public transport and offer a boost to London’s cultural, hospitality and leisure sectors. It will also make it more affordable for workers to commute back into the office more regularly.

Record numbers of people are now using pay as you go as an alternative to travelcards, with 80 per cent of Tube journeys and 74 per cent of bus journeys now made using pay as you go. This means that the vast majority of Londoners will benefit from the Mayor’s decision to freeze fares again.

Example savings as a result of the Mayor’s latest fare freeze (assuming that fares set by TfL would have increased by four per cent as per its Business Plan assumptions):

Someone commuting from Southall to a Zone One station, like Bond Street on the Elizabeth line, four days a week will avoid a potential 20p increase to their Zones 1 to 4 peak single PAYG fare, saving up to £72 a year on their commute alone
Someone commuting from Harrow-on-the-Hill to a Zone One station, like Baker Street on the Metropolitan line, three days a week will avoid a potential 20p increase to their Zones 1 to 5 peak single PAYG fare, saving up to £54 a year on their commute alone
Someone commuting from Hornchurch to a Zone One station, like Westminster on the District line, five days a week will avoid a potential 20p increase to their Zones 1 to 6 peak single PAYG fare, saving up to £90 a year on their commute alone

Buses are the most accessible, available and affordable form of public transport, with the Mayor’s Hopper fare continuing to offer Londoners unlimited bus journeys within an hour for just £1.75. Had the single bus and tram fare increased by 10p again, as was the case for the last two years to ensure TfL complied with the requirements of the Government’s emergency funding settlements, someone making a return bus journey every weekday, which did not benefit from the Hopper fare, would have to pay an extra £50 over the course of a year.

Single and return paper fares on TfL services will also be frozen this year, to ensure that those who prefer to travel without using pay as you go and use single / return tickets are not excluded from the fares freeze.

Freezing fares for the next year is a key part of the Mayor’s programme to support Londoners through the cost-of-living crisis. This also includes investing £3.46bn into building the genuinely affordable homes Londoners need, £400m on skills and employment programmes to support Londoners to find more secure work, more than £80m to help to tackle fuel poverty, and support for private renters and to tackle food insecurity.

The Mayor has also extended his emergency funding package of more than £3.5m that has already helped to provide more then 10m free meals during school holidays and at weekends to low-income Londoners struggling with the spiralling cost of living since April.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan said: “The cost-of-living crisis continues to hit Londoners hard. That’s why I’ve decided to step in again to freeze TfL fares. Not only will this put money back in people’s pockets, making transport more affordable for millions of Londoners, but will encourage people back onto our public transport network. This will help to boost London’s culture, retail and hospitality sectors.

“While people across the country face another hike in their rail fares, I simply wasn’t prepared to stand by and see TfL customers face a similar hike.

“This is the fifth fares freeze I’ve done since becoming Mayor, making transport in our city 21 per cent cheaper than it would have been had fares risen by inflation. This shows that whenever I can freeze fares, I do so.

“As we continue building a fairer, greener and more prosperous London for everyone, making public transport more affordable and appealing will continue to be a key part of my plan.”

Shashi Verma, Chief Technology Officer at TfL, said: “Millions of people travel using bus, Tube and rail services across London and delivering the Mayor’s fares freeze will help encourage more people across London out of their cars and onto public transport. It will also support overall economic growth and improved social wellbeing across the city. Our latest figures show that pay as you go ticketing is now more popular than ever and we continue to work across London to help make travel more convenient for all.”

Muniya Barua, Deputy Chief Executive of BusinessLDN, said: “The decision to freeze fares during a cost-of-living crisis will come as a relief to Londoners. Affordable fares are vital for getting more people onto public transport and encouraging more hybrid workers back into the capital, particularly on quieter Fridays.”

Dee Corsi, Chief Executive of the New West End Company said; “In the last 18 months, the West End has benefited greatly from investments into transport infrastructure – most notably the opening of the Elizabeth Line, which has seen Tottenham Court Road become the second busiest underground station in London. Of course, this infrastructure investment will only show returns if the public can afford to make use of it. We therefore welcome the Mayor’s decision to freeze fares for another year – a move which will benefit workers, shoppers and international visitors alike. Ensuring the West End, and London, remains moving is critical to future growth, and a key component of what makes the capital one of the most vibrant cities globally.”

Paul Tuohy, Chief Executive of Campaign for Better Transport said: "This is good news for the millions of Londoners and visitors who use TfL services to travel across the city. Affordable public transport will not only help people with the cost of living, but it will also help with the fight against climate change, after the planet's warmest year on record."

ENDS -

Notes to editors:

All pay as you go fares on the bus, Tube, DLR, Tram are frozen, as are the majority of pay as you go fares on London Overground and the Elizabeth line.
TfL’s Business Plan (published in December 2023) assumed that fares would increase by 4 per cent as per its funding agreement with the DfT dated August 2022. On 22 December 2023 the DfT confirmed that National Rail fares would be increasing by 4.9 per cent.
The Mayor is proposing to spend £123m as part of his budget for the Greater London Authority (GLA) Group for 2024-25. The government’s publication of the provisional local government settlement just before Christmas enabled the Mayor to confirm that this is affordable within the GLA’s annual budget
The GLA Group includes the GLA, Transport for London (TfL), the Metropolitan Police Service, the London Fire Brigade, the London Legacy Development Corporation and Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation.
The Mayor’s draft budget for the GLA Group was published on 17 January 2024 and the final draft budget on 14 February 2024.www.london.gov.uk/budget
Following the Department for Transport’s decision to increase the penalty fare to £100 (plus the price of the full single fare) across National Rail, the Mayor has also approved an increase to the penalty fare on all TfL services from £80 to £100, reduced to £50 if paid within 21 days. This will ensure that there are clear and consistent rules and penalties across the different transport networks in London, and that the penalty fare remains an effective deterrent and that the costs of fare evasion are more effectively absorbed by those who deliberately fail to pay.
Since 2011, there has been no changes to the penalty fare charge on TfL services. The changes will come in on 3 March 2024.
TfL’s most recent annual estimate of fare evasion (2022-23) across all of its public transport modes is 3.9 per cent, which equates to over £130m in unpaid journeys. Some of this is recovered through revenue-enforcement activity, amounting to £7.2m in 2022-23 in penalty fare and prosecution income. Penalty fare income is used to help offset the costs of enforcement but does not come close to covering these in full.
TfL’s Revenue Protection Programme (RPP) is a comprehensive programme of interventions aimed at reducing fare evasion and ticket fraud. It is informed by data, benchmarking, and evidence of what works in deterring, detecting, and reducing revenue loss. A key element of revenue protection activity is the deployment of revenue officers to deter, detect and deal with fare evasion across all our public transport networks. There are approximately 450 officers that undertake revenue activity on a daily basis on our network