The TikTok influencers promoting fare dodging on the Tube: Viewers shown 'hacks' to get through barriers without paying after damning report reveals the criminality has become 'normalised'

Daily Mail​

21 hours ago

TikTok influencers are brazenly showing London Underground passengers how to illegally travel for free by 'bumping' through the station ticket barriers.
Young men are filming themselves laughing and joking with each other as they push through the wide-aisle gates in videos liked by hundreds of thousands of viewers.
The gates, which were first installed in 2008 at a cost of £12million, are normally used by wheelchair users, older people, parents with children and travellers with luggage.
But they are increasingly being used by fare dodgers who either push through the gap in the middle, or quickly follow someone in front of them who touches out.
It comes amid a fare dodging epidemic on UK trains, with an official report published this week revealing staff believe the practice is becoming 'normalised' and they are struggling to cope with 'aggressive' passengers who refuse to buy tickets.
Videos show young men at stations across the Tube network walking through barriers without being stopped by staff - and even explaining to others how to do it.
In one clip posted by rapper Stepz, real name Samuel Agyei, he claims that Transport for London (TfL) have 'upgraded the barriers' but still pushes his way through.
References to 'free TfL' and 'free travel' can be heard, as he tells the camera: 'I don't know why they made it look like it's hard to bump through when it's that easy.'
The clip by Stepz, who has 3.5million TikTok followers, was called 'Still Easy' and has racked up 388,000 likes and nearly 1,000 comments since being posted in 2022.
Another video by Tenton, who has 70,000 followers, sees the TikToker push through the barriers and ask: 'Mandem, at what age are we gonna stop bumping train?'
He says: 'It's getting silly guys because I'm almost finished uni and I'm still bumping train.'
As a staff member walks past, he tells them: 'Sorry, you didn't hear that.'
Tenton continues: 'Realistically at what age are we gonna stop? When we got grey hairs we're not gonna be bumping train. Do you get it guys? I think the threshold is 25.'
A third video by user CFCRocky7 features a man showing women how to push through the barrier at Stratford, with the caption: 'Saving NPCs [non-player characters] from extortionate train fares @Transport for London.'
In another video posted by Parafactual, a series of commuters are shown at East Ham walking through the barriers without paying, following customers who do touch out.
Similar videos have also appeared on other social media sites such as Instagram.
One posted by Gavin Chee, which has racked up 80,000 views, is called: 'Different types of people bumping TfL. Can't lie know bare talkers.'
This shows a series of different attempts to get through the barriers at a Bakerloo line station by the same man in a comedic style, categorised as 'The Scum Bag'; 'The Runner'; 'The Talker'; 'The Savage' and 'The Kwalis'.
Fare dodgers are estimated to cost TfL around £130million a year in lost revenue.
Wide-aisle gates are the main access point for chronic fare evaders, and TfL has trialled changes to how they work at some stations to see if they can reduce pushers.
Siwan Hayward, TfL's director of security, policing and enforcement, told MailOnline: 'The overwhelming majority of our customers pay the correct fare, however there is a minority who do attempt to travel without a valid ticket which is a criminal offence.
'Fare evasion is unacceptable. That is why we are strengthening our capability to deter and detect fare evaders, including expanding our team of professional investigators to target the most prolific fare evaders across the network.
'This builds on the work of our team of more than 500 uniformed officers already deployed across the network to deal with fare evasion and other anti-social behaviour, keeping staff and customers safe.'
An estimated 3.4 per cent of passengers did not pay fares between April and December 2024 – and they face a fine of £100 if caught, although this is halved if paid within a fortnight
Ms Hayward added: 'Fare evasion is not a victimless crime. It robs Londoners of vital investment in a safe, frequent and reliable transport network and we are committed to reducing the current rate of fare evasion to 1.5 per cent by 2030.'
TikTok told MailOnline it has removed videos which violate its community guidelines around criminal behaviour, and has also blocked associated hashtags and search terms related to this.
The social media firm's guidelines state that it does not allow content which promotes or provides instructions on how to commit criminal activities that may harm people or property.
Between October and December last year, TikTok claims to have proactively removed 97.1 per cent of content which violated its violence and criminal behaviour policies before it was reported to the firm.
Meanwhile a report by the Office of Road and Rail (ORR) released on Wednesday found travellers are using 'a range of techniques to persistently' underpay or avoid paying and see it as a 'victimless crime'.
Staff enduring abusive behaviour when asking fare-dodgers to present their tickets are warning that evasion is becoming 'increasingly more challenging to tackle'.
The report had been commissioned to look at concerns some passengers were being unfairly prosecuted by train operators over genuine mistakes when buying tickets.
But it found fare evasion is a mounting problem now costing taxpayers £400million a year which is resulting in higher fares and less investment cash to improve services.
In recent weeks MailOnline highlighted some of the worst cases of evasion in exclusive clips from the Channel 5 series Fare Dodgers: At War With The Law, airing on Monday nights at 9pm.
And shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick tweeted a video last week in which he confronted people pushing through the barriers at Stratford station in London.