Sadiq Khan ‘avoids cleaning Tube graffiti' in push for extra funding
The graffiti epidemic on the Tube is 'helpful' for Sir Sadiq Khan, Transport for London (TfL) insiders have admitted.
Sources said the declining condition of the Bakerloo line was benefiting the Mayor of London's campaign for a multi-million-pound Government handout to fund new trains.
But the remarks prompted accusations that Sir Sadiq had chosen not to completely eradicate the vandalism because it boosted his political ambitions.
A group of Londoners earlier this month cleaned graffiti from the interior of Bakerloo trains themselves after a proliferation of vandalism on the line.
Vandals have defaced the interiors of the line's trains with tens of thousands of 'tags', a form of signature which gives them kudos among fellow graffiti artists.
Sources at TfL, which Sir Sadiq leads, said it welcomed 'anything that helps make the case for new trains' – including the graffiti.
An insider said: 'In terms of the graffiti, anything that helps make the case for new trains is going to be helpful. We would rather the graffiti wasn't happening, obviously.
'But if this is going to help, we want to replace them and we need money from the Government to do it.'
Sir Sadiq is lobbying the Government to fund new trains for the Bakerloo line to replace its existing 1970s-era rolling stock.
He has also called for the line to be extended to Lewisham, in south-east London, but has said TfL could not afford either without receiving additional taxpayer cash from central Government.
Keith Prince, transport spokesman for the City Hall Conservatives, said Sir Sadiq could 'solve this blight' of graffiti if he wanted to.
He said: 'The idea that graffiti on the Tube is this shockingly bad purely because Starmer won't give Khan money for the Bakerloo line is just nonsense, and nonsense that Londoners will see right through.
'Pull the other one Sadiq, and actually use your powers as TfL chair to solve this blight.'
Former police officers believe the Bakerloo and Central lines are particularly targeted by graffiti vandals because they do not have any CCTV cameras in their carriages.
Graham Wettone, a retired Metropolitan Police officer, said: 'The 'tag' is the type and style of initials or icon left by the so-called artist and has become in some places an accepted form of 'modern art'.
'The absence of CCTV is likely to be one significant factor because there is less of a deterrent to the offenders.'
Andrew Trotter, former chief constable of the British Transport Police, added that not having CCTV made it difficult to even identify the culprit, let alone prosecute them.
He said: 'You always want CCTV. I think one of the great things about trains these days is that just about every train, every carriage, every platform is covered.
'Any time there is an investigation, you know your officers are very good at getting the CCTV and tracking people through the system. So it is a real shame.'
Rory Geoghegan, a former police officer and founder of the Public Safety Foundation, said the graffiti epidemic would not end unless CCTV was retrofitted to the Bakerloo and Central lines.
He added: 'The mayor and TfL urgently need to get a grip. Secure the depots, clean the trains, retrofit CCTV, and make clear that public space will be protected. Anything less is a failure of leadership.'
TfL has no plans to install CCTV, however, because it believes this would be 'prohibitively expensive'.
'We're already talking to the Government – and we've already said several times – about wanting to replace the trains,' an insider said. 'So it wouldn't make a great deal of sense to retrofit CCTV on the Bakerloo Line, just from a financial perspective.'
Graffiti is also widespread on the Bakerloo line because TfL no longer has enough of the half-a-century-old rolling stock to take vandalised trains out of service to be cleaned, which is the policy on other lines.
That means transport chiefs are forced to continue using vandalised trains to maintain a regular service on the line.
TfL said its 'accelerated cleaning programme' was removing 3,000 'tags' a week from Bakerloo and Central line trains.
A spokesman said: 'We previously withdrew trains from service as soon as they had been vandalised, but with reduced availability due to ageing trains, this isn't always possible without impacting services.
'This is why we are working to secure investment in the Tube network, to replace and upgrade trains and ensure we can deliver the world-class transport network that Londoners and visitors deserve and expect.'
The spokesman added: 'We are removing graffiti from the Tube network absolutely as fast as possible. It is completely untrue to suggest that any graffiti is left for longer than necessary for any reason.
'We have deployed an accelerated cleaning programme in response to the specific increase in graffiti on the Central and Bakerloo lines. Teams are removing graffiti 24/7, and are currently removing more than 1,000 tags per week on the Bakerloo line and more than 2,000 on the Central line.'
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