TfL’s discounted Friday fares trial fell flat with Londoners

A discounted fares trial to encourage people to travel to work on Fridays had no meaningful effect on passenger numbers, a TfL report has found.

Announced last January, before the National Rail train companies were involved in implementing it, the scheme set aside £24 million of GLA funds to subsidise the cost of Friday travel at peak hours to off-peak rates.

The thinking was that lower fares might encourage more people to travel.

The scheme came into effect on 8th March and lasted until 31st May 2024.

However, a TfL report into the trial found that journey numbers during the trial were at the “same level as pre-trial Fridays”, in effect no effect at all.

The report also noted that although the discount offered was larger both in percentage and absolute terms for journeys involving more zones, providing a larger incentive for customers to change their travel patterns, no material demand growth was observed irrespective of the size of the discount available.

In fact, the only meaningful change was that people with a 60+ travelcard concession were able to travel before 9am instead of waiting until 9am. Although 60+ travel in the peak hours did increase slightly, it was still sharply down on pre-pandemic levels.

The conclusion reached was that the “trial has shown that a temporary discount to peak fares on a Friday does not result in a significant increase in travel, suggesting that there are factors other than price that influence our customers when deciding on which weekdays to travel.”

To a degree, it’s not a huge surprise that a fairly modest cut in fares would cause a substantial change in behaviour. Someone travelling from Zone 6 to Zone 1 saw a Friday fare reduce from £5.60 to £3.60. However, considering that part of the trial’s aims was to boost the hospitality sector by luring people into central London, a £2 discount didn’t seem to be that appealing to someone being asked to spend £6 on a pint.

However, while some will leap in feet first to accuse the Mayor of wasting money — what if it had worked? An idea is just an idea until it is tested, and if you don’t test it, how can you know if it works?

In the grand scheme of things, £16.5 million of the £24 million budget is a tiny sum for a city the size of London, and while it didn’t have the effect that was aimed for if the trial hadn’t taken place, we’d have never known if it could have worked.

It’s worth noting that the aim of the trial was to boost the hospitality industry, not TfL’s own finances, so it only needed a modest increase in passengers to have worked in supporting jobs across London, and hence justify a short-term GLA taxpayer subsidy. In essence, it was a variant of the Eat Out to Help Out scheme during the pandemic. However, even a modest rise in passenger numbers failed to materialise.

A spokesperson for the Mayor said: “The Mayor and TfL are continually exploring innovative approaches to making public transport as attractive and as affordable as possible for Londoners. The Friday fares trial was also a direct response to the concerns of London’s businesses, who see incentivising travel on quieter days of the week as a key priority. The data gathered from this trial form part of a wider look at how we address post-COVID demand for public transport, and contained some valuable learnings to inform future decision making.”

If anything, the trial has reinforced existing thinking about what motivates people to use public transport. For all the headlines about the cost of travel, people seem to value having a reliable journey over modest cost savings,

Previous research by TfL on the choice between raising fares or cutting services to balance the finances found that fare rises reduce passenger numbers by less than cuts to services. Speaking in January 2023, TfL’s Director of Strategy and Chief Technology Officer, Shashi Verma said that “on balance, the thing that you have to consider all the time when looking at fares decisions is how to keep the system fiscally whole so that you are not engaging in service cuts, which are far more destructive than fare increases.”

For TfL to recover its finances in the post-pandemic world, a focus on quality of service seems likely to generate a faster recovery than cutting peak-hour fares on a Friday morning.

Now, it seems that the proof is available that fare cuts aren’t motivating people to commute to work. Investing in public transport, however, does seem to drive up ridership — as the Elizabeth line has demonstrated ever since it opened — and hence the increase in fares revenue to pay for the upgrades.

There could be a way of testing that theory again this year, with the phased introduction of new trains on the Piccadilly line and DLR, and whether that lures more people to use public transport on those lines.

In the meantime, while you might not save money, travelling on Fridays will still be slightly more pleasant because fewer people are travelling, so enjoy that bonus while it lasts.

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Updated 5:15pm with statement from the Mayor of London’s office.