Transport for London is “making life easy” for fare dodgers by leaving ticket barriers open, says the Labour Assembly Member for Ealing & Hillingdon .

The worst offending stations in the two boroughs saw barriers being left open 22.09% of the time in Ealing and 19.19% in Hillingdon .

Dr Onkar Sahota AM, who uncovered the data, shows the increasing trend to leave barriers open contributes to “£61m lost to fare evasion each year.”

Whilst real-time data on whether ticket barriers are left open is not collected, TfL undertakes regular unannounced ‘mystery shopper’ exercises to monitor whether ticket barriers are left open.

Labour AM Dr Sahota said: “The vast majority of Londoners are honest about these things but there will always be a small minority who take advantage and try to avoid paying their fares.

“We should be doing all we can to crack down on fare dodgers, not making life easy for them by leaving some station ticket barriers open more than half the time.”

Across the whole tube network barriers were left open 6.91% of the time in June and July this year, compared with only 3.18% of the time over the same period in 2011.

Since 2011 the percentage of ticket barriers being left open has increased every year.

Dr Sahota added: “By cutting 950 staff from stations, TfL risks having to leave ticket barriers open more often, making fare evasion that little bit easier.

“It’s a total false economy if the money saved by reducing staff is then lost as a result of increased fare dodging.”

Whilst technical faults can cause ticket barriers to be left open, TfL rules state that when there are no members of staff available to help passengers on the gateline the barriers must be left open, which lose £61.27m each year, according to their latest estimates.

Steve Burton, TfL’s Director of Enforcement and On-Street Operations, says fare evasion on TfL's rail and bus networks has “fallen to around just two per cent of all journeys.”

He said: “This shows that the overwhelming majority of our customers simply want to pay the correct fare and we now have more staff than ever before in ticket halls to assist them.

“We take fare evasion of any kind extremely seriously and communicate the consequences of being caught without a valid ticket.

“For every journey, customers must have a valid ticket or tap in and out using Oyster or a contactless payment card – even if the ticket barriers are open.

“If customers do not tap in or out then they will be charged a maximum fare for the journey.”

Worst five stations for leaving barriers open in the boroughs:

Ealing

Hillingdon