London Underground and London Overground contactless sales 2015-2023 inclusive
Request ID: FOI-0995-2425 Date published: 24 July 2024
You asked
F/O from 0640-2425
Dear Sara Thomas,
I cannot start this follow-up without first acknowledging your efforts to put all this information together. It certainly helps with my research. Thank you!
I have achieved 70-80% of what I was aiming for. However, some of the data you intended to present as a table appears in a horizontal format. Unless I got the years wrong, I have one question:
For the London Underground, I see a downward trend in ticket sales as follows:
325.7 (starting in 2015)
294.5
264.5
237.4
215.6
185.1
49.6
87.0
114.6
114.2 (ending in 2024)
Surely, the ticket sales aren't going down consecutively, right? (Excluding the period during COVID, which makes sense). Could it be because the breakdown doesn’t count "contactless" as a category, and most tickets were sold through this channel?
If so, to finalize the data and wrap everything up, could I get the missing channel and respective numbers through which tickets (or "passages") have been sold? This way, I would be able to fix the totals.
1.1. The same point, but now regarding London Overground. From the data sent (breakdown between TVM and Ticket Office), the totals I get are:
14,081,314 (starting in 2015)
13,284,664
12,044,821
10,712,129
8,907,883
2,841,116
4,798,218
5,256,372
5,535,232 (ending in 2023)
From looking at these figures, it seems as if people are using the London Overground less frequently. Surely they are buying their tickets through other channels? I would ask the same as before, a full breakdown to fix the totals.
This way, I will be able to fully capture the preferences of British consumers and close this FOI request.
We answered
TfL Ref: 0995-2425
Thank you for your follow-on request to FOI ref 0640-2425, received by Transport for London (TfL) on 26 June 2024 asking for further information about annual contactless / Oyster journeys for London Underground and London Overground since 2015.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm that we hold some of the information you require.
Please find attached two documents: The first shows London Underground journeys made using Oyster PAYG and Contactless PAYG across the period you asked about. We have also provided the journeys made on travelcards (off-peak/peak/season). The second shows details of the London Overground sales revenue across the various ticket / payment types available; please note we have only been able to provide this data from 2017, when West Anglia was brought in and was included within our numbers.
If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for any reason, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed.
Yours sincerely
Sara Thomas FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
