TfL reports 6.8% increase in crime - including almost 15,000 cases of theft and pickpocketing.
Crime on the Elizabeth line has soared by 33 per cent in a year, Transport for London has revealed.
This means that the crime rate on the £20bn “Lizzie line” – the busiest train line in the country – is higher than for London buses.
A total of 1,435 crimes were reported on the line between January and August last year, a 33 per cent increase on the 1,078 reported over the same period a year earlier.
The figures, which do not cover all of 2024 because the September cyber attack on TfL crippled its data collection systems, exclude the killing of Elizabeth line worker Jorge Ortega, who was attacked on the platform at Ilford station in December and died in hospital two days later.
TfL also reported a 13.1 per cent increase in crime on the Tube, driven by a 20 per cent increase in violence.Sexual offences on the Tube increased by 11.3 per cent, according to thereport to TfL’s safety and security panel.
There were 1,982 hate crime offences committed on the TfL network in the first eight months of 2024, compared with 1,551 during the previous year - a rise of 27.8 per cent.
TfL said this “reflects increases seen in antisemitism and Islamophobia which spiked following the attack on Israel and the war in Gaza”.
Across all TfL services, including the Tube, DLR, London Overground and Croydon tram, there was a 6.8 per cent increase in reported crime.
A total of 31,648 offences were recorded on TfL’s network between January 1 and August 30, 2,023 more than the same period a year earlier.
More than half of all crimes (16,288) happened on the Tube. There were 11,965 crimes on London buses, 1,435 on the Elizabeth line, 1,297 on the London Overground, 530 on the DLR, 131 on trams and two on the cable car.
TfL said there had been a 6.2 per cent increase in theft – “predominately” pickpocketing – to 14,704 offences.
There was also a 2.5 per cent increase in violence and a 1.8 per cent increase in public order offences.
However, robbery was down seven per cent, including 8.5 per cent on the Tube, to a total of 1,919 offences.
Crime rose faster than the increase in passenger numbers, which were up 2.8 per cent.
The Tube had the highest crime rate, of 20.7 crimes per million passenger journeys. Trams were second with a rate of 11.7 crimes per million journeys, followed by the Overground (10.7), the Elizabeth line (9.7) and buses (9.6).
TfL’s passenger survey from last September found that 34 per cent of respondents felt worried on public transport in the past three months. Six per cent of Londoners were completely or temporarily deterred from using public transport due to a worrying incident.
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