Should London's transport network be free?

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast.

0:30So it is definitely on the snack side. I think London's, especially serving with a beer, kind of augmenting that snack more towards the idea of a meal or at least a quick, satisfying lunch. But first, campaigners are calling for free public transport in London as travel fares are set to rise above inflation until 2030. The capital's tube network is considered the most expensive of any major global city. Earlier this month, the House of Commons Transport Committee proposed that everyone aged under 22 in England should be given a free bus pass to help them get into work and education. But the campaign group, Fair Free London, says a complete restructure of TfL is needed.

1:17Currently, a single tube journey in London costs from£2.50 to£3.80 using Oyster or contactless, depending on the travel zone and whether it's peak or off-peak. London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan increased TfL fares by an average of 4.6 per cent in March, though bus and tram fares were frozen at£1.75. But Transport for London says it is mostly funded by passenger fares in comparison to other countries which receive large subsidies from central government, and the removal of passenger fares would require billions of pounds to be found elsewhere. It comes as rates of fare evasion have soared by almost 50 % compared to two years ago, costing TfL£190 million a year.

2:04Joining us now is The Standards' City Hall and Transport Editor Ross Lydell. Why are these demands being made? London is expensive for people who pay the full price fare, especially if you travel by tube or train, namely the Overground or the Elizabeth Line. Getting around London isn't a cheap thing to do and that has led to calls for a wider review of whether more people can be given free travel. Now this call has come from a group called Fair Free London. Essentially it's a group of activists who are doing some sort of blue sky thinking, almost to think the unthinkable. So how dependent is TfL on passenger fares?

2:45It raised£5.3 billion last year, Transport for London did, in terms of all the fares paid by passengers. And this money is essential to not only pay the wages of the tube drivers and the bus companies that run all these different routes for TFL, but also to enable the system to be maintained and renewed and upgraded. You wouldn't get the Elizabeth line if you didn't have people paying fares. Do you think the cost is prohibitive? Many people already receive free public transport in London. If you are a child under 11, you don't pay anything. And indeed, then if you're between 11 and 18, you can then get a zip card and then you still get free travel on all the buses and you pay a discounted amount on the Tube.

3:29My daughter's just got her own zip card and typically for a tube fare, it's around 90 pence per trip. So that is very good value. If you are 60 or older, you also travel for free after nine in the morning. That is on the tube, the buses and the trains. That's right across London. Some people think this is the sort of greatest gift really to many older Londoners. And it's more than a million Londoners benefit from this sort of concession. And it's important to say as well, of course, that many of these Londoners, as soon as they're 60, they essentially get the free bus pass, as it's well known.

4:02But they can still be working. So people can be on a full salary, a very hefty salary, and pay absolutely nothing while the person sitting next to them is paying the full whack. So there are many forms of concessionary travel already available. Now, in terms of what happens next, if we look at the fares, then Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, is under an obligation from the government to increase fares every year until 2030 by above the rate of inflation. That's in return for a£2.2 billion grant that Sadiq and TfL got from the Chancellor back in sort of April-May time. But it does mean that fares will keep going up.

4:41It's very unusual for fares not to go up. Sadiq, to his credit, has been able to freeze some fares. Most recently in March, he did freeze bus and tram fares. But there's the ongoing pressure. You know, for example, just now we have the RMT union threatening to go on strike in a week or so's time. That's over a battle over pay with TfL. It wants more than 3 % for its members. Of course, people rightly want a pay rise, but who's going to pay for it if it's not passengers? And that's the simple economy, really, you know, that it costs money to run the system, it costs money to pay the drivers. Therefore, who's going to pay?

5:17Well, it comes down to passengers. So whilst most of us are paying too much to travel, last month you reported that some are dodging transport fares altogether. Tell me more about what you found out. Fare evasion has really been thrown into the spotlight, primarily because of a Tory politician called Robert Jenrick, who had in a sort of have-a-go-hero moment, took it upon himself to challenge some people he saw evading fares on the tube. He went to Stratford Station and then got himself into a bit of bother. He was threatened when he asked people why they were essentially barging through the barriers.

5:51But he also got people talking about the wider issue of fare evasion. Now, this has been a longstanding problem, but it seems to have increased since the pandemic, partly probably because then people didn't really have to pay fares or they weren't challenged because of the social distancing restrictions. and also the fact that fares have gone up and that perhaps some people aren't earning the same amount of money. So there's been the economic pressure sort of state of the economy that may be inspiring some people to not pay fares. What we've always been told by TFL is that fares evasion is low.

6:24It's around 3 % and it's around 100 to 130 million pounds a year. Only last month we were able to reveal actually that fares evasion was much worse than previously thought. it's now worth about£190 million a year in lost income to TfL. And now I can report today that actual different rates of fare evasion are happening. And for example, the amount of people dodging fares on the tube or on the tram around Croydon and Wimbledon or on the DLR system is far higher than, say, on the buses. So you have rates of sort of 5%, 6%, 7 % on these worst modes, if you like, in terms of the tube and the tram and evasion of about 2 % on the buses, primarily, of course, on the buses because you have to walk past the driver before you get on the bus.

7:10Now, what does all this mean? Well, it means that millions of pounds a year are not going into TfL's coffers. And what does that mean for those who do pay fares? Well, it's as simple as this, that if some people are dodging their fares, then those who do pay have to pay more. Even TfL itself says this is unfair, it's selfish and it's criminal behaviour. The scale of the fare dodging problem, which many regular passengers will see on a daily basis, is actually worse than TfL would have us believe. And what is being done to tackle this? TfL has been essentially launching a crackdown since April.

7:42It's got a team of around 500 sort of fare detection people. They use both technology to spot persistent offenders by looking at the way cards are used at the contactless ticket barriers. that looks for people who essentially try to fool the barrier, either by claiming to have travelled less distance than they have in reality and therefore get a cheaper fare, or who may be using a dodgy bank card to get through. You have officials going up and down trains, DLRs and so on, and actually asking you to hand over your Oyster card or your contactless card so they can check that a fare has just been paid on it.

8:20At least they're acting and taking heed of the warnings, but it's certainly the case that they are trying to crack down on this. Now, TfL says that more than a million people have been challenged in the past few months, asked about whether they have paid fares or not and of those who have been caught found not having paid the correct fare, more than£1.6 million has been taken back in in revenue that otherwise TfL would not have received. Finally, do you have anything else to add? In terms of how London compares with other cities, TFL says actually the fare evasion rate in New York is far higher.

8:54It says around 9 % of journalists in New York are dodged. About half of all attacks on tube staff happen when they actually say to somebody, hang on a minute, mate, you haven't paid your fare. And then they end up either with a volley of abuse or being physically attacked. So it's not necessarily the job of tube station staff to act as sort of TFL police and stop people going through the barriers. But it's a wider issue and it sort of links into the whole sense of antisocial behaviour and crime on the tube that people who don't pay fares are very often people who also get up to all other kinds of either antisocial or criminal behaviour while using the public transport network.

9:38Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two, how the simplicity of Portuguese cuisine is proving a hit with Londoners. We'll see you back here in just a moment. Welcome back. Summer may be coming to an end, but you don't need to be on the sun-soaked streets of Porto or Lisbon to try the latest food trend. The traditional Portuguese sandwich, the bufana, has captured the attention of London's diners and it's not hard to find in the capital. On the south side of the city you'll find Little Portugal, where a sizable Portuguese community in Stockwell has been slinging Bifanas for years now. To find out more, I spoke to food writer Sam Wilson.

10:22What is a Bifana? A Bifana is a pork sandwich. It's served in kind of an ovoid roll that's called a papaseco and it's thin slices of pork that's been not quite stewed but simmered for a long time in this liquor that's stained with paprika, heavy with garlic, white wine typically served with a yellow mustard that's akin more to like American yellow mustard and sometimes with cheese that can vary from your classic American plastic vinyl cheese to something that's more like a cohita or called a I think queijo which is a very sort of mild slightly salty cheese on top of all of that these sandwiches typically finished off with just kind kind of a good anointing of the liquor itself.

11:09It's a very messy sandwich. And why is this dish popular? Obviously, sandwiches have been having a prolonged moment, mostly because I think that's down to their ability to be reinvented, redefined, or just by observing tradition. And I think that in a lot of ways, the Bifana kind of is in that intersection. San Sebastian, that influence in sort of Iberia in general, I feel like that's been having a big moment over the last couple of years. that's now migrating towards somewhere like Portugal, where we have the Bufana. So you had Ollington's kind of proudly defining themselves as Iberian, and they recently started doing a Bufana.

11:47With a lot of trends, they're always just kind of laying dormant because you have little Portugal in Stockwell that's been around since the late 60s, 70s. And so on the one hand, you have the accessibility of a sandwich, but it's also the Bufana in its core appeal is just very simple. And there's not a lot of fuss. And I think that's what potentially really appeals to people about it. So what's the difference between Imbifana and another popular Portuguese sandwich, a Francesina? So the Francesina means a little French woman. And it's another Portuguese staple, slightly varies everywhere you go.

12:24From the outside, it's like a croque madame on welfare. It's kind of overlapping slices of E-dam style cheese surrounding a runny yolk. that's all fused together with ladlefuls of this sort of gently spicy tomato sauce called mojo de francesina, which in my experience kind of tasted like the sauce you get with baked beans, not overly spicy. That's kind of where the similarities between it and the inspiration of its croc madame might end because beneath all the layers, it's a keto Trojan horse, basically. It's a layer of toast. And the Portuguese seem to have a real enthusiasm for carnivorous dishes.

13:01And so you've got the ham of a crock, but then it's a layer of steak and linguicia, which is kind of similar to a chorizo, sometimes another layer of ham. And then to top it off, it all comes with fries. But it's on the one hand, either something you really want to eat before drinking or afterwards, despite just being under the title of a sandwich. It's a mini meal, really. The Francescina there compared to a Bufana, Bufana way simpler and arguably more accessible because even though they're both quite saucy affairs, you could, I think, easily consume a Bufana far quicker. And you visited Portugal recently.

13:38What's the difference between a Bufana there compared to London? And where would you recommend? I went there with some recommendations from a friend of mine who was a Portuguese native, and she had recommended a couple of places, one of which was called Conga. The texture of their pork was kind of almost more like pulled pork. It reminds me of McDonald's, and they started to put wood panelling in place and tried to make it seem a bit more earthy. They're just firing out these bifanas. They're about€3.50, and so you've got people ordering a couple at a time, and then they've just got sachets of yellow mustard or extra chili oil, like piri-piri style, that you can add onto it.

14:13But I would say back in London, you've got a little Portugal with places like Estrella, a Toca, a Cittanier and a Catina de Portugal, which come at the behest of your own Josh Barry. Top of the line for me is quality wines. That was the one I had most recently. Even though traditionally the roll is meant to be kind of crisp on the outside, very flowery, this has like that elasticity that leaves your teeth marks in it. Proper chew, but the pork is beautifully simmered to a wimp. You can bite cleanly through the entire thing, no stringy bits, but it's the liquor that they splash onto it and that it's cooked in.

14:50It is just chorizo distilled, the essence of it. So stained with paprika, but it's so porky. It's one of those ones where you take one bite and it's kind of a treadmill. And before you know it, the whole thing's gone and it's running down your elbows just as you like it. Tollington, slightly different. They toast the inside of their bun, got almost like a fried bread in it to it, which I really love. rather than this kind of Ridley Scott kind of tendrils of pork falling out everywhere. It's more just slices piled on top of one another, slightly more broad, but still bites really cleanly. And they serve that with mustard and kind of a piri on the side.

15:25And then Juliet's with their latest, they're the latest one to do it, it seems of the more higher end restaurants, I guess you might say. They are similar to Tollington's. I've not had that personally yet, but like quality wines, they serve it with a super bock, which is a nod to how you might consume it in Portugal. Finally, what is it about the sandwich or variations on the sandwich that we still find so appealing? You can make them as cheaply or as bougie as you like. And I think what makes them so appealing is the ubiquity of it. Nine out of 10 times, you will get what's in your mind's eye.

15:59The Bifana, for example, to bring it back to that, when I think about Max Halley's philosophy, A sandwich would be hot, cold, sweet, sour, crunchy, soft. Ostensibly, the Pafana kind of encapsulates that. And I just think that's such a great philosophy and it's kind of stood the test of time there.

16:19And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. If you'd like to get in touch, please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk. We'll be back here tomorrow at 5pm. We'll see you then.