Bus-related violence seems to be getting worse. A concerted effort by transport and crime prevention authorities is urgently required

 
Safety officers on patrol to tackle anti-social behaviour on the buses in the West Midlands

 
Eight days into 2025 and there were two murders on the UK bus network. On January 7, 14-year-old Kelyan Bokassa was stabbed on the 472 bus in Woolwich. The following day, 17-year-old Thomas Taylor was set upon by a group of males and murdered next to Bedford Bus Station.

The senseless killing of Bokassa was subject to more publicity than that of Taylor, due to his perceived involvement in gang culture and an ongoing feud, his mother claiming gangs had groomed him since the age of six. The context to Taylor’s murder is less clear – he was a popular, well-respected pupil with a strong set of academic results before entering sixth form. Yet, he was barbarically attacked and killed. 

The heinous crime at Bedford Bus Station was a surprise. Bedford hardly strikes me as a hotbed of violence. Yet, when I trawled the internet, I stumbled across bus-related savagery that involved but was not confined to London in recent times. Reports related to a brawl at Inverness Bus Station involving a 20cm knife, a 19-year-old pulling a tantrum and ‘Rambo knife’ on a driver in Birmingham because he wouldn’t stop just for him to disembark where he wanted. In more grim tales, a knife was brandished in a homophobic and racist outburst on a bus near Knowlsey. There was an attempted murder of an 18-year-old protecting his girlfriend in Middlesbrough Bus Station, whilst just after New Year there was social media footage of youths fighting with samurai swords outside Westfield Shopping Centre, a stone’s throw from Stratford Bus Station.

The litany of appalling crimes is seemingly endless and my internet trawl unearthed details of youths brandishing knives in a fight at Redditch, a knife battle ensuing on a bus in Streatham leading to one boy with an eight-inch blade slashing another on the upper deck. Last week, Hassan Sentamu was found guilty of stabbing a 15-year old schoolgirl to death at a bus stop in central Croydon in a row over a teddy bear. And last year we also had the despicable murder of Stagecoach bus driver, Keith Rollinson at Elgin Bus Station – the teenager responsible was given a custodial sentence of just four years and four months.

Some will say I’m being sensationalist, but I genuinely believe that it isn’t unreasonable of people not to travel by bus, certainly upstairs, particularly during late afternoons and evenings when schools and colleges are at kicking out time. Low-level feuds and ‘disrespecting’-related incidents are very visible, and with alarming frequency, it would seem that these spiral into something far more sinister.

It’s hard to know if facts support my perceptions. Transport for London’s website hasn’t published statistics relating to bus crime since 2020/1, and if you try and delve into its board reports in search of reports relating to disorder and action plans, the minutes look like some cosy ‘love-in’ with everyone welcoming each other, congratulating peers and superiors on their recent appointments. The content seems to be fawning senior managers reporting upwards on their great work. It doesn’t look like the most scrutinising and challenging of environments in the upper echelons of TfL. 

The litany of appalling crimes is seemingly endless

It isn’t easy to envisage what can be done to turn the tide. What we witness on public transport is a microcosm of society, but the bus always feels worse because it contains such a magnitude of intricate small distance flows, where feuds from one neighbourhood (‘postcode wars’) are a mere bus stop or two apart and because of the short journeys. It is the battleground for those with minimal social mobility and, in turn, aspirations. It also goes deep into the heart of the most socially broken communities, the sink estates, boarded-up shopping streets that have fallen on hard times, and parks that are havens for congregating for anti-social activity, such as drug peddling.

Low fares, by comparison to rail, mean that there are few, if any, ‘barriers to entry’ (which is a good thing), and all this tends to, as blunt as it may sound, mean that bus travel can attract the most deprived and sometimes deranged and disturbed customers. With the NHS beyond breaking point, as well as funding cuts impacting social services, it’s not hard to deduce that there are more people out there with untreated disorders that ultimately could present a danger to society.

Buses are also the first point of release of pent-up frustration that might ensue in the relatively controlled and policed school or college environment during the day. The bus stop and the bus itself are the first unsupervised, unsegregated place at which malcontent youths come together when the bell goes and simmering feuds can be addressed. This is worsened by social media, in which every settled score is caught on camera and replayed to exact humiliation and spawn future revenge.

There are a few measures that can be taken, even if they feel a bit desperate and supine in terms of genuinely getting to grips with the situation. Firstly, there seems almost a normalisation of the current situation. The murder of Thomas Taylor in Bedford wasn’t even a national media headline for a day.

There needs to be a more concerted effort by the transport and crime prevention authorities to tackle gang and related violence on the network. Despite his knighthood, it doesn’t feel that Sadiq Khan, as London mayor and the overall leader of TfL, has confronted the issue of gun and knife crime with the vigour that the population expects, but equally, putting the problem solely on his doorstep, as though he is more accountable than the perpetrators of crime and their parents, is again, politicising and overly simplifying the issue. However, the lack of transparency around crime figures on London’s buses and actions being taken to address the scourge doesn’t instil much confidence and is pretty inexcusable.

Meanwhile, the dithering regarding a credible customer satisfaction survey mechanism for the bus industry, in terms of scope, scale, sample size, and frequency of reporting, makes it hard to gauge customer perceptions about how secure they feel when travelling on a bus credibly.

Stepping up police patrols around bus stations during key times would make sense. I recall, just before Covid, witnessing an almighty afternoon brawl at Wednesbury Bus Station involving college youths and then an even more incredible response from police who turned up en masse minutes later. It was impressive stuff, but a visible presence in advance would have been a deterrent rather than after it had all kicked off and wounds were being nursed. There aren’t many bus stations in the UK, less still those that are ready to explode, so even the slightest police presence would be better than none at all.

Transport operator or local authority staffing at bus stations must also be restored. For too long, supervisors and hosts have been seen as ancillary. Bus Service Improvement Plan funding should prioritise putting visible, effective ambassadors and security staff back on the organisation chart.

So too, knife shields/detectors around prolific hotspots and an increase in ‘stop and search’, however thorny the issue. More high-profile signage reminding folk of the scale and technologically advanced nature of CCTV cameras would also help – it always amazes me the stupidity of criminals committing offences in shopping centres, rail and bus stations or sporting stadia where it’s inevitable they will be clearly caught on camera.

Representatives from schools and colleges should also habitually hang around their nearest bus stop at the end of the academic day. I remember that when we saw our teachers watching us get on-board the bus after school, the smoking, swearing and brawling was parked for another day. 

There should also be more special targeted operations, including intelligence-led undercover exercises with plain-clothed staff. At the other extreme, I’d like to see some kind of equivalent of the Railway Enforcement Officer scheme across the bus industry – high profile, specialist staff with the clout to deal with violence effectively and prosecute. The criminal agencies, local authorities and bus companies should also publicise the success of their special operations, in terms of prosecutions and sentencing. 

Stepping up police patrols around bus stations during key times would make sense

Bus franchising also provides an opportunity to take more control in a concerted way. More funding, combined with a prescriptive service requirement, single operator focus in each geographical region and a greater emphasis on multi-modal integration and pan-agency collaboration, should create a more efficient and joined-up approach. I’m yet to genuinely feel that franchising is placing the required emphasis on tackling crime on buses, but it’s early days in the process.

With a sense that violent crime is ramping up and likely to get worse in tandem with any deepening cost of living crisis, it’s hard not to feel defeatist. When I see on social media footage of mass fights with zombie knives or of rampant looting of shops and bus drivers having to break up sizeable scuffles, it’s impossible not to feel that society, as we know it, is disintegrating. Nostalgic footage of Oxford Street and its environs in the 1960s and 1970s, when everything felt so law-abiding and innocent by comparison to today, doesn’t help the sense of loss. But, then it always feels worse now – we didn’t have social media to record the glue-sniffers that mum used to complain were hanging round Orpington College when she finished her flower arranging class each Tuesday in the early 1980s, or almost every child under 16 on the upstairs of the 61 bus to school in Chislehurst acting like chain smokers or indeed the regular punks v skinheads seaside fights.

It might seem futile to focus intently on turning the tide on serious violent crime when so many factors are against us. Society isn’t going to give up knives, guns and drugs anytime soon, nor will poverty and deprivation disappear, or people become more caring, unselfish and loving towards each other, particularly, some might argue, in an increasingly secular UK. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to contest that any attempt is rather pointless. We might reduce the propensity of crime, but it will instead be displaced to shopping centres, residential areas, and elsewhere. Murderers won’t stop killing just because it’s harder to do so on a bus or at a bus stop. But, as transport professionals, we can only (and ‘must’) do our bit and focus on the contribution we can make in the area where we are accountable whilst hoping everyone else puts rigour and conviction into their lines of jurisdiction.

Let’s place trust that the police will be more effective, so too those who make the laws and dish out the sentences and that councils will invest in more and better CCTV, that private and public sector agencies and organisations invest in security staff, park-keepers, more teachers, social workers, youth clubs, support mechanisms and so on, and much more. We can only do our bit, that’s all that can be asked of us, but we must rise up and do so soonest, before it’s too late.

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alex Warner has over 30 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector. He is co-founder of transport technology business Lost Group and transport consultancy AJW Experience Group (which includes Great Scenic Journeys). He is also chair of West Midlands Grand Rail Collaboration.

 
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.

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