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A £24mn trial to boost Friday trips into central London with subsidised tickets only slightly increased passenger numbers on the capital’s underground network, data shows.
Friday ridership on the London Underground during the “Let’s Do Fridays” trial between March 8 and May 31 increased 3 per cent year on year, according to Transport for London data.
The scheme offered commuters discounted off-peak Tube and rail fares all day on Fridays, and was launched by London Mayor Sadiq Khan to boost passenger numbers and the wider economy in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Average underground passenger numbers on Fridays during the period of the trial increased from 3.22mn last year to 3.32mn this year, the data shows.
The trial’s failure to significantly increase passenger numbers has raised questions over the value of the £24mn scheme.
Jon Tabbush, senior researcher at the Centre for London think-tank, said the trial was a useful experiment but the effects and scale were limited.
“There are political reasons for doing it,” he added, referring to criticism from opponents of the scheme that it had been timed ahead of the mayoral election on May 2 to score political points.
Commuting on the underground at peak times from Zone 6 to Zone 1 costs £5.60 per journey but over the trial, the price dropped to £3.60.
Tabbush said the discount simply was not big enough to shift the needle for commuting professionals, adding that people were more likely to make decisions based on convenience, service reliability and whether they have in-person meetings.
He added that it was “good for the whole country for cities to be able to test out these ideas and monitor their results”.
Nick Tyler, director of the Centre for Transport Studies research centre at University College London, said the trial had not made a substantive difference to the number of Tube trips made.
He said the ideal was to have a “more civilised life by freeing up the working day, away from the 19th-century factory model”, by promoting flexible working and spreading journeys throughout the day.
Tyler said the experiment had addressed the symptoms rather than the problems themselves. “We should . . . figure out how to make the transport system fit with the people rather than force the people to fit the transport system,” he added.
Khan had previously said the trial was being introduced “to support the hospitality, culture and retail sectors as we continue building a better more prosperous London for everyone”.
TfL said: “We continue to analyse the impact of our trial of off-peak pay-as-you-go fares on Tube and rail services on a Friday, which ended on 31 May 2024.
“This analysis will take into account a number of aspects including assessing changes to both morning peak ridership and overall daily ridership, as well as the impact to businesses across London,” it added.
The annual Tube ridership on a Friday decreased by nearly two-thirds from 223mn in 2019 to 96mn in 2021, however, it increased steadily to 172mn in 2023.
Khan’s office did not respond to a request to comment.