Docklands Light Railway fare dodgers cost TfL £11m last decade
Docklands Light Railway fare dodgers have cost Transport for London (TfL) nearly £11m over the last decade.
Between 2010 and 2020, just under £10.9m was stripped from the network’s coffers by passengers, many making use of its gateless entries.
“A large chunk of the network is gateless, it doesn’t have ticket gates in the same way the London Underground does,” Richard Graham, managing director of the DLR franchise operator KeolisAmey Docklands, told a London Assembly transport committee hearing on Monday.
Graham said 14 so-called “revenue blocks,” which refer to groups of staff who patrol station exits and entries and issue penalty fares, had been set up to control fare evasion.
“Those revenue blocks give us an indication of just over 1 per cent in terms of fare evasion, we think that is slightly lower than what we are actually seeing on the network,” he added.
Ticketless travel surveys run by TfL have estimated a figure of between three to four per cent across London’s transport operators.
It comes after the BBC revealed TfL had lost over £130m over the last year from fare evasion, in October.
Counterfeit tickets and failing to tap out are all common means of dodging the fees. The capital’s transport body told the BBC it would likely increase the penalty fares onT its services to act “as a further deterrent.”
TfL is limited on what it can do to stop the practice, given ongoing post-Covid funding issues, the committee heard.
Yesterday, the operator struck a long-awaited deal for £250m more funding over the next financial year from the government. But senior officials and business groups warned of a shortfall, with the offer amounting to only half of the £500m TfL had initially requested.