Londoners take graffiti covered Tube trains into their own hands

A group of people took Tube graffiti into their own hands by giving carriages a scrub themselves.

Recent months have seen a dramatic increase in defaced carriages, with Underground trains frequently seen covered with graffiti both on the inside and outside.

Joe Reeve, from Looking for Growth, led a team to spruce up trains on Sunday morning.

He told Metro: ‘We are seeing this [graffiti] every single day. I take the Bakerloo Line every day. I see someone push through the barriers, and then every carriage is covered in graffiti.

‘It’s one of the those things that bugs people.’

He added: ‘Londoners are fed up and the cavalry is here. We are not going away.’

His team used an environmentally friendly water-based graffiti remover to clear the writing plastered all over the carriages, including on the doors, floors and ceilings.

But he explained that while some stains came off on the first wipe, others took far longer to remove, suggesting they had been left for weeks.

He said: ‘It comes off in the first wipe if it’s under a week. When the graffiti’s older it sticks more. By not dealing with it right away, it makes it much harder and more expensive to remove it later.’

They’re hoping to return to the fleet on Tuesday, and this time Joe hopes they will cover a full carriage every 30 minutes.

In the last few months, graffiti has become a common sight on the Tube in recent months, specifically on the Bakerloo and Central lines.

Both happen to have some of the oldest rolling stock on the network, with Bakerloo line trains having been continuously in service since 1970 – the oldest fleet still operating in Britain today.

But the problem has spread onto other lines and newer trains, with even the brand new Piccadilly Line stock, which has yet to begin service, covered in artwork on arrival from Germany last year.

Many commuters have said the graffiti reminds them of the New York Subway in the 1980s, when the system was well-know for being hotspot for crime and tagging.

London Assembly member Bassam Mahfouz said that as well as making trains look a ‘complete eyesore’ the artwork was making passengers feel less safe.

He said: ‘If it is removed within a reasonable period of time, then that minimises the number of people who see it and therefore, there is no point putting even the sliver of effort to my artwork if it’s not going to be seen, and I’ll move somewhere else.

Last month, TfL explained that a faulty automatic train washer was partly responsible for the uptick in graffiti visible on trains, but later clarified that the problem had been rectified.

However commuters are increasingly convinced the problem is a symptom of the network’s ageing rolling stock, with some suggesting that a shortage of trains on both lines means TfL is unable to take sets out of service to rid them of graffiti.

One user commented on Reddit: ‘TfL’s current budget constraints means less money is being spent on low-level maintenance requirements such as graffiti removal, so it’s not being removed much, and more graffiti is encouraging more graffiti and so on.’

Another factor  is the lack of CCTV coverage on both lines, with the exception of some refurbished Central Line trains, so vandals are rarely caught on camera.

Joe blames a combination of poor procurement and management at the top, in particular the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.

TfL said that it works to remove graffiti quickly, but added that where it cannot be wiped down easily it is covered wherever possible before being attended to during engineering hours, in order to keep trains in service.

Siwan Hayward, director of security, policing and enforcement said: ‘The safety of our customers and staff is our top priority. We are working closely with the police to prevent crime and anti-social behaviour on the network, with over 2,500 police and police community support officers and 500 TfL enforcement staff patrolling the network at all times.

‘We work hard to ensure that our customers and staff feel safe when travelling on the network and continue to strengthen our capability to deter and detect fare evaders and ensure our trains and stations remain a pleasant and clean environment for passengers.’

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