Crime on London’s public transport network has risen by almost 50 per cent since the pandemic – with ‘unacceptable’ levels of violence against women and girls, according to a devastating new report.

The London Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee has published a new report that suggests people are increasingly anxious about using buses, Tubes and trains to get across the capital for fear of falling victim to crime.

Around 48,000 crimes were reported across Transport for London (TfL) services in 2025 – up 46 per cent against a pre-pandemic average of 16,544.

Its findings are calamitous for London’s transport and policing bodies and for Mayor of London Sadiq Khan: the committee’s chair, Marina Ahmad, said that while she expected ‘to find a problem, what we found was a crisis’.

Seven in 10 Londoners are choosing not to travel, or not to travel at certain times of the day, ‘because they were worried about their personal security’, Tricia Hayes of London TravelWatch told the committee.

This may go some way to explaining why, as official TfL statistics suggest, passenger journeys fell by 2.4 per cent in the second half of 2025.

Transport and policing authorities say they are responding to the challenge.

Siwan Hayward, TfL’s Director of Security, Policing and Enforcement, said: ‘The safety of everyone using the transport network is an absolute priority for us.

‘We have a strong police and enforcement presence on our services and in our stations to prevent crime and are determined to continue working together to make the transport network a hostile place for offenders. 

‘We welcome the committee’s report and will be responding to the recommendations in due course.’ 

Between 2023 and 2025, crimes on the Underground rose 12.5 per cent, while they rose 60.4 on the newest part of the network, the Elizabeth Line, and rose 15 per cent on the Overground.

Crime dipped three percent on buses, 2.7 per cent on the Docklands Light Railway and 40 per cent on Trams in the same time period. Overall crime on the network has risen almost eight percent in the last three years alone.

The report focuses on efforts to tackle hate crime and violence against women and girls (VAWG). Of all public transport crime reports in 2025 almost a fifth, 4,593, related to VAWG and another 1,724 were incidents of hate crime.

Only a handful of incidents ever led to a charge, and a suspect was not identified in 58 per cent and 66 per cent of VAWG and hate crime incidents respectively.

The true number of incidents is likely to be higher: people are not thought to come forward to report them because they do not trust authorities to act. London TravelWatch estimates as many as 80 per cent of incidents go unreported.

Just last week, a serial predator who sexually assaulted four women at London Underground and mainline stations last year was jailed.

Craig Anderson, 38, approached lone women before asking for their phone numbers and attacking them. 

Prosecutors described him as a man who ‘did not take no for an answer’, while police said he smirked throughout his interview and refused to answer questions. He is now serving a 22 month sentence.

In January, Stanislaw Pozniecki was jailed after approaching a sleeping woman on a Jubilee Line train and assaulting her, before offering her £20 to sleep with him. 

He followed her off the Underground train at Wembley Park where he was met by police – where he seemed more concerned with missing the last train than the fact he had been arrested. He was jailed for four years.

Incidents of violence and harassment are often filmed and shared on social media. 

A video was published earlier this month showing a group of foul-mouthed teenagers who refused to stop vaping on an Elizabeth Line train – sparking a brawl that spilled out onto the platform.

A teenage girl in the group who was asked not to smoke on the train told a male passenger to ‘f*** off’ before the altercation turned physical. The BTP is investigating.

Grinning sexual predator Craig Anderson, who consistently approached women and asked for their phone numbers before assaulting them

Stanislaw Pozniecki was more concerned about getting the last train than being arrested for sexual assault

Almost half of travellers – 45 per cent – say they’re either ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ worried about being harassed while commuting, and more than half say they have little to no confidence in TfL, the Met and the BTP to take action.

It recently prompted a campaigner to call for the return of ‘ladies only’ carriages as seen in the early days of the railways.

In a nod to the British Transport Police’s oft-repeated slogan, Camille Brown quipped in her online petition to TfL: ‘We always see it, we do say it, but it’s still not sorted’.

The Assembly committee has recommended TfL, the BTP and the Metropolitan Police establish a joint rapid response task force for hate crime and VAWG incidents as they happen, and to publish an annual survey on how it responds to those types of crime.

Commander Clair Kelland, public protection lead for the Met, said in a statement to the Mail that the force was training officers in how to better respond to VAWG incidents.

‘As this report highlights there is more to be done to make women feel safer on transport in London, which is why we will continue to work closely with TfL, BTP and local partners,’ she added.

The BTP said tackling hate crime and VAWG remained its ‘top priority’.

A spokesperson said: ‘We know that reporting crime needs to be easy and discreet, and we’re proud of our text 61016 service which allows passengers to report crime to us discreetly and for free.

‘Last year we received a 20 per cent increase in reports, showing us that more passengers know how to report crime to us and have the confidence to do so, knowing they will be believed and taken seriously.’

TfL launched a new campaign encouraging people to ‘act like a friend’ and intervene in incidents where it is safe to do so. It launched a dedicated taskforce to tackle hate crime and VAWG last year.

The Mayor of London’s office was contacted for comment. 

It comes after a BBC investigation found that the British Transport Police is struggling to identify sex offenders because of faulty or non-existent CCTV cameras.

Of 562 investigations into alleged sex offences reported in 2025 involving CCTV evidence, 250 either had no CCTV available, or was of unusable quality.