Are WFH Fridays here to stay? Sadiq Khan's £24m cheap fares plan to lure Londoners back to the office 'flops'
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Sir Sadiq Khan’s £24m scheme that offered cheaper Tube and train fares on Fridays made “no noticeable difference” to the number of people travelling into central London, an official analysis has found. The mayor’s “off peak Fridays” initiative ran for 13 weeks, starting on March 8 and concluding on May 31.
The temporary scrapping of peak rates – including on the Elizabeth line, London Overground and mainline commuter trains within the capital – meant savings of between 10p and £2 per journey. But it failed to reverse the trend of many Londoners choosing Friday as a day to work from home and stay away from their central London workplace.
It said that passengers travelling in from the suburbs stood to save most but there was “no material demand growth was observed irrespective of the size of discount available”. Sir Sadiq, speaking at a London Assembly meeting at City Hall on Wednesday, said he was now considering incentives such as free coffees for passengers who clocked up a certain number of points on their Oyster cards.
The TfL report, which was quietly published on its website before Christmas but which only came to light under assembly questioning on Wednesday morning, said that pre-trial passenger growth had been 3.8 per cent – but fell to three per cent during the trial.
The problem that Sir Sadiq had faced was that on Fridays in 2019, there were 1.1m journeys made during morning peak hours. But this had fallen to 0.7m by 2023. He said that only £16.5m of the £24m he had set aside for the Friday fares scheme – to plug the gap in TfL fares income and to reimburse the private train firms - was needed, due to the lower than hoped uptake.
