A London bus driver who was sacked for fighting a thief has shared his approach to dealing with fare dodgers. Mark Hehir, who drove buses for two years, said it is not worth confronting those who board without paying.
Driver's advice on handling fare dodgers
Hehir was hailed a hero after he was dismissed in January 2025 for chasing a man who snatched a passenger's necklace in 2024. During the incident, he punched the thief in self-defence and held him until police arrived. But fare dodgers, he said, are not worth the trouble.
He told Metro: 'It's all about reading the situation. Would you stop a young girl who had no fare at 11pm in the rain? No. There's an unspoken rule on buses – don't interact with abusive people or fare dodgers. That's for inspectors to sort out. You are not employed as a bouncer, you are a driver.'
Cost of fare evasion
Fare dodging costs Transport for London £165 million a year, almost cancelling out the £168 million saved by recent price rises. The increases, announced in March, were said to be needed to maintain services.
Ameer Kotecha from the Centre for Government Reform, which released the figures, said: 'What they weren’t told is that fare evasion is costing TfL almost exactly the same amount the rise was expected to generate across the entire network. Before asking Londoners to dig deeper into their pocket, TfL needs to get serious about enforcement. This is not a funding problem, but sheer incompetence.'
TfL's response
An official report last year found TfL staff believed fare dodging had become 'normalised' as they struggled to cope with passengers who refuse to buy tickets.
TfL said fare evasion dropped to 3.5% from 3.9% in 2022/23, with a target of 1.5% by the end of the 2030 financial year. A spokesperson said: '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 antisocial behaviour, keeping staff and customers safe.'
