The truth about Tube fare hikes
Plus: wrong'uns at Foxtons, a new London borough, and the Dalston cafe getting a shoutout at the Oscars
Morning — as you may have seen while checking your 4am bank notifications from TfL this week, Tube fares have gone up. It’s the first price hike in a while, as Sadiq Khan froze fares last year — a decision some say was politically motivated, given he had an election coming up. But as you can see in the inflation-adjusted chart above, there’s a long history of Tube price politics in London — Khan’s not the first to fiddle with fares before a vote. The real cost of a Tube fare over the past two decades, and what it says about our mayors, is below.
Plus: wrong'uns at Foxtons, a new London borough, and the Dalston cafe getting a shoutout at the Oscars.
In case you missed it: as the cost of studying in London soars, some students are turning to a hidden and sometimes dangerous trade. On Saturday we published an investigation by the journalist Maddy Fry, who’s speaking to students in the capital who are turning to sex work to afford their studies.
What we’ve spied
🦊 Foxtons, one of London's biggest estate and lettings agents, has become embroiled in a staff misconduct scandal. Last week Bloomberg published an investigation based on interviews with 20 former and current staff at Foxtons, who allege that junior team members had experienced unwanted touching, explicit messages and racial slurs from their seniors. One staff member, referred to as Lucy, who worked in the company's central London office, detailed how she'd attempted to report the harassment she was facing to HR, who in turn didn't take her allegations seriously. A manager had been trying to kiss her and hold her hand in the office, then she had also had her bottom slapped at work drinks. HR told her they wouldn't act until she filed a police report. Other staff members, who worked at branches across the capital, told Bloomberg they too had struggled to hold senior colleagues to account for inappropriate behaviour, including one who said he'd been ignored when he told Foxtons chief executive Guy Gittins that he'd been called a 'p---' by a manager. This week Gittins admitted the company had "more to do" on its workplace culture, as he also unveiled its 2024 financial results, which shows Foxtons is now banking £106m a year from London's rip-off rental market, up from £68m in 2019. Gittins was appointed chief exec in 2022 with a mission to "bring the fun back" to Foxtons, by creating a "high performance" culture that rewards staff with blowout parties and holidays — more on that in this recent issue of the Spy. Hopefully this year's bashes are tamer affairs.
➕ London might be getting a new borough: Slough. Councillors at the Berkshire local authority have been presented with the option of joining Greater London, as part of the national government's plans to cut the number of smaller English councils. Papers put before the councillors at a meeting last month include the possibility of a "merger with a west London borough". It's being discussed in the wake of local government secretary Angela Rayner announcing a reorganisation of councils in England to simplify the system. The alternative for Slough is to merge with other councils in Berkshire like Reading, and that seems to be the most serious prospect on the table — but Slough council leader, Dexter Smith, has said he's keeping an "open mind" on joining London. He told the Local Government Chronicle that Slough faces "typical London issues", like the rising cost of temporary accommodation, and that joining the capital could mean more public funding. And mayor Sadiq Khan also seems up for the idea, telling MyLondon: "I'm always happy to speak to those who want to join the people's republic of London. It's really important for us to recognise Greater London has actually grown from London over a period of decades". Though no specific London borough has been named for the merger, only one currently shares a border with Slough: Hillingdon.
🚨 A London student has been convicted of drugging and raping 10 women, with the lead detective on the case saying he "may turn out to be one of the most prolific sexual predators" ever seen in Britain. Chinese national Zhenhao Zou, a 28-year-old PhD student at University College London (UCL), was convicted by a jury at the Inner London crown court on Wednesday, after prosecutors built a case that partly relied on videos Zou filmed of his victims. Zou was convicted for the rape of three women in London and seven in China, but the Met Police says newly recovered evidence suggests he may have committed 50 more attacks, half of which were in the capital.
🏳️🌈 A fighting fund has been set up to save Bethnal Green Working Men's Club (BGWMC), a much-loved queer venue in east London that's at risk of closure. As of writing on Wednesday evening, a crowdfunder started by the Friends of BWMC has raised £11,686, just shy of the initial target of £12,000, which organisers want to put towards a community purchase of the club. Last summer the BGWMC was given a two-month eviction notice by owners, with campaigners believing there are plans in the works to sell the building to developers. The Friends of BGWMC say they are using the money they've raised to conduct a detailed building survey and valuation, to inform their bid to buy the club on behalf of the community.
🚫 Several companies who've been connected to the Grenfell Tower fire are facing an investigation that could see them banned from bidding for public contracts. Last week the government announced that seven contractors are being investigated for professional misconduct. Three of the companies — Arconic, which made cladding, as well as Kingspan and Celotex, which made insulation — have already been criticised by the official inquiry into the 2017 disaster. Announcing the investigation, Angela Rayner, who is deputy PM as well as housing secretary, said: "The bereaved and the survivors and members of the Grenfell community are still waiting for the justice they need and deserve, and justice must be done". This latest action by the national government comes on top of the local ban on several Grenfell contractors by Kensington and Chelsea council, which was extended in November.
🗺️ FROM THE BOROUGHS 🗺️ The pedestrianisation of Camden High Street is set to go ahead, after local borough councillors approved a trial. Cars and other motor traffic will be banned from the busy street when the trial starts later this year — from the junction with Parkway and Kentish Town Road up to the junction of Jamestown Road and Hawley Crescent. Buses will be rerouted around the area. The trial will last for a maximum of 18 months, under the powers Camden council are using to enact pedestrianisation. TfL is also putting in £130,000 to fund the trial.
Elsewhere: Lambeth council has requested a £40m bailout from the government, claiming it needs the “emergency” cash to plug budget holes in its housing department. Not helping things is the fact that since 2017 the council has paid out more than £16m in compensation to tenants for substandard homes and poor services. In Haringey, teachers have gone on strike at four local authority-controlled schools over plans to increase class sizes to 30. And in Redbridge, beleaguered mega-landlord MP Jas Athwal has quietly stepped down as a councillor.
🔍 And finally, we leave you with:
The Dalston cafe getting a shoutout at the Oscars (Guardian)
A service marking 50 years since the Moorgate Tube crash (BBC)
The launch of the public consultation on pedestrianising Oxford Street (TfL)
News that Sicilian Avenue is finally re-opening this summer (Londonist)
An anti-Tesla ad on the Tube (Reddit)
The 15-year legal feud between chicken chain Morley’s and a “copycat” competitor (Telegraph £)
A cheeky surprise on Westminster bridge in the sunshine (Reddit)
Sir Limealot (TikTok)
Has the Elizabeth line shown what rail investment can achieve? (Guardian)
Islington’s answer to Big Ben (TikTok)
A streetwear pop-up shutting down Soho: parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 (TikTok)
What dating in Hackney feels like (TikTok)
London’s biggest fare hiker: Boris Johnson
TfL fares increased by an average of 4.6% on Monday, leading to the usual voices once again claiming that London has gone down the pan.
"It’s official — London’s transport prices are now the highest in the world," blared the headline of a Telegraph story on Sunday, which compared single ticket prices in the capital with metro fares in cities like Berlin, Barcelona and Paris.
The figures were of course cherry-picked — by chief consumer editor Nick Trend's own admission: "It is true that in my survey of the fares of ten major metro systems around the world, London is pipped by Berlin when it comes to the cost of a single ticket in the central zone (£2.80 compared with £3.14 in the German capital). But for short journeys of only three stops, Berlin’s ticket price is much lower."
But in any case, as far as London's own fare history is concerned, this week's rise puts Tube fares bang in the middle of the past two decades, according to our own Spy analysis.
We've looked at the price of a single Tube fare at peak times in Zones 1 to 4 since 2004, the first year of pay-as-you-go travel on the Underground, and put these historic fares in today's prices.
As of Monday, that fare now costs £4.60, which puts the price of a daily commute from Zone 4 to Zone 1 just shy of £10.
It's a 20p rise on the £4.40 price set by TfL and mayor Sadiq Khan last year — a hike that's definitely above inflation.
But if you take a longer view, and adjust for the several fare freezes put in place by Khan, the price of the Tube has broadly fallen over his nine years as mayor.
Back in 2016, when he was first elected, a Zone 1-4 ticket at peak travel times cost £3.90 — which is equivalent to £5.31 in today's prices.
But once elected, Khan froze fares until 2020, which meant the fare price fell to £4.88 when adjusting for inflation over that period.
The four-year freeze had featured heavily as a promise in Khan's 2016 election manifesto. He wrote: "London’s transport has always been a big part of my life ... like most Londoners, I’ve relied on it throughout my life to get me around. We can’t afford to let the cost of travel become a barrier to work. That’s why it’s vital we put a hold on the rocketing fares of the last eight years."
Things took a turn in 2021 though, when the pandemic and WFH blew a hole in TfL's fare revenues. To fill it, Khan let fares creep up at a rate that outstripped inflation.
But the combination of rampant price rises during the 2023 energy crisis, and then Khan's pre-election fare freeze in 2024, more than reversed the uptick.
Before this week's rise, the 2024 fare was £4.53 in today's prices, the lowest in real terms in over ten years.
Khan's record is very different to that of Boris Johnson, who presided over a streak of large real-term fare rises during his eight years as mayor.
When he first got the job in 2008, a Zone 1-4 ticket cost £2.50, or £4.11 in today's prices.
Within a year he had cranked it up to £4.47 in today's prices, then £4.78 the next.
By 2015, after years of above-inflation rises, pay-as-you-go fares were the highest on record in real terms, at £5.32.
At the time Johnson justified the rises as needed to fund big TfL projects, like bringing back Routermaster buses and constructing the Elizabeth line, then known as Crossrail.
Some may say the big fare hikes also enabled Johnson to pursue “vanity projects”, in the words of Val Shawcross, like the infamous cable car or garden bridge.
But Johnson repeatedly stood his ground. In 2011, he described that year’s fare rise, of 7%, as a "moderate policy, designed to ensure that we have the investment that we need in London's transport infrastructure".
He was also boosted by the fact that both Tube and bus ridership were growing consistently in the 2010s, despite the fare rises.
Together, the Johnson hikes completely undid the cuts under his predecessor, Labour's Ken Livingstone.
The data isn't as comparable for Livingstone, given Oyster cards and pay-as-you-go travel was only introduced in late 2003.
But, like Khan, Livingstone kept fares frozen for four years in a row from 2005. It didn’t do much good for his 2008 re-election campaign, though.
Anyway, our stats paint a pretty clear picture of the politics of Tube fares: a red City Hall has led to a fall, and a blue one to a rise.
The big question is whether Khan keeps to that rule, seeing as TfL finances still aren’t in a great position since the pandemic.
Indeed, just two weeks ago, the transport authority revealed it’s got to find £20m in savings this year.
We may need to enjoy averagely-priced Tube fares while we can.
