London’s most dangerous Tube and train stations can today be named and shamed.
can reveal more than 4,100 crimes were recorded in 2024 at King’s Cross St Pancras, one of the capital’s busiest terminals. This is more than any other station on Transport for London’s (TfL) entire network.
However, when taking passenger numbers into account, the most dangerous station is Poplar on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), near Canary Wharf.
Statistics collated by the British Transport Police (BTP) and TfL show 46 crimes were committed at the stop on the self-driving line last year. This equated to a rate of 58.7 offences for every million passengers.
It was followed by Cockfosters, the northern terminus of the Piccadilly line, with 57.4 crimes per million passengers, and then King’s Cross St Pancras with 51.4.
Since Sadiq Khan became Mayor in 2016, Tube crime rates have more than doubled, from 9 per every million journeys to more than 21 last March. Similarly, offences have risen on the Overground, DLR and Elizabeth line, which opened in 2022.
Our analysis comes after shock stats last month laid bare the ever-worsening crime epidemic plaguing commuters, who have fallen victim to violent, racist, sexist and anti-Semitic assaults.
One woman was even whipped in the face with a belt in a sickening attack at Green Park station last January.
Liban Ahmed, handed a suspended 18-month prison sentence for the attack, was caught on film shouting as he moved up and down the platform, trying to avoid two men trying to grab him.
In a fit of rage, the 27-year-old lashed out with his belt catching a woman trying to board the train.
Mansoor Ahmed, 30, was last month jailed for 26 months and slapped on the sex offenders register for a decade after he sexually assaulted two women on the Tube.
On September 6, 2020, Ahmed sexually assaulted a woman walking up the stairs at Gloucester Road station and just a few months later on November 20, he assaulted another woman walking down the steps at Charing Cross.
Jaya Pathak, who campaigned for more action against sexual harassment on the tube after she was assaulted last year, told that the situation has ‘getting worse’.
Ms Pathak, 27, was harassed by a man who continually starred at her for several stops, then ‘pretended to be drunk’ and rested his head on her shoulder on a Victoria line train to Walthamstow last April.
‘He tried to make it look as if he was nodding off as an excuse to touch me, when I pushed him off, he laughed it off and kept starting again,’ said Ms Pathak, who works in foreign policy.
She said that the man even beckoned to her to get off the train at Blackhorse Road, the stop before she was due to get off at the end of the line.
As the station was platform was virtually empty at the terminus, she felt unsafe as no staff could have been there to put a stop if things turned sour.
Ms Pathak has called for TfL to staff emptier end-of-line stations as a deterrent to would-be sexual predators, who may not act if someone else is watching.
Homeless man Brwa Shorsh, 24, pushed an innocent stranger, Tadeusz Potoczek, onto the tracks at Oxford Circus underground station just seconds before the train pulled in, in February 2024.
Mr Potoczek had been hurrying home to catch a flight and was looking at the arrivals board when he was attacked in what prosecutor Sam Barker described as ‘the thing of nightmares’.
The Kurdish migrant had claimed he’d targeted the 60-year-old in ‘revenge’ after thinking Mr Potoczek had given him a ‘dirty look’. Fortunately Mr Potoczek, a postman, missed the electrified rail and was helped back onto the platform by a passer-by who rushed to his aid.
The driver had put on the emergency brake and his train was just four seconds away from hitting the victim.
Shorsh, who has accumulated convictions of assault and indecent acts since arriving in Britain in 2019, had denied trying to kill his victim and claimed he did not know a train was arriving at the time.
In July last year that year he was found guilty of attempted murder by a jury at Inner London Crown Court after just 32 minutes of deliberations and he was jailed for life with a minimum term of eight years.
A Jewish man wearing a kippah suffered a display of vile anti-Semitism on the Northern Line last March, when a vaping passenger said: ‘Your religion kills Muslims.’
The victim filmed the argument, where the passenger said: ‘You’ve done a lot… You’re wearing the hat.’
The man, who shared the footage with the Campaign Against Antisemitism accused the vaper of being anti-Semitic.
Across all Underground, Overground, DLR and Elizabeth line stations (excluding stations outside the London fare zones), 38,000 crimes were reported to the BTP in 2024, according to their data.
This is the equivalent of 104 per day.
Data includes crimes committed at the stations themselves and those committed on trains either at or arriving into that station.
Terminus stations can be over-represented in the on-train crime figures because if the exact location is unknown, it may be recorded as having happened at the end of the line.
After King’s Cross St Pancras, the fourth most dangerous Tube stop is Epping, Essex, the north eastern terminus of the Central line, with a rate of 49.
Fifth is Upminster Bridge, east London, on the District Line with a rate of 48.6.
The major London terminals of Finsbury Park come in sixth and seventh with rates of 46.1 (885 total crimes) and 36.5 (1,825 total crimes), respectively.
However, several Elizabeth line stations outside the main London fare zones (1-9) — Taplow (76 per 1m), Twyford (71), Burnham (62), Reading (60) — have even higher rates. We have excluded these stations and all outside the London fare zones from the rankings, although you can still see them on the map.
analysis suggests that the most dangerous line on TfL’s network is the Overground’s Lioness Line, which runs between Euston and Watford Junction, with a rate of 28 per 1m passengers.
A total of 2,533 crimes were recorded at stations on this line, which services around 90m people a year.
Next is the Victoria line with 26 per 1m (11,700 total crimes) and the Metropolitan with 20 per 1m (7,000 total).
The safest line in London is the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), with a crime rate of 8.3 per million passengers, followed by the Suffragette (8.7) and Jubilee (9.7).
These figures have been calculated by adding together the total crimes and footfall for each station which serves each line, then using those numbers to calculate the rate per 1m passengers.
As the figures do not state which section of a station or on which train an ‘on-train’ crime occured, offences at stations which serve multiple lines have been counted towards the total of each line it serves.
Siwan Hayward, TfL’s Director of Security, Policing and Enforcement, said: ‘The overall risk of experiencing crime on London’s transport network is low. We are committed to working with the police to make sure this remains the case and to ensuring that everyone travelling in London can do so safely.
‘Theft of personal property continues to be the most commonly reported crime on our public transport networks, accounting for almost half of crime. Thieves target busy areas and our transport networks are no exception. There is a range of activity underway to tackle this including targeted operations, investigations and crime prevention advice for customers.
‘Working with the police, our priority is protecting our customers and staff from serious harm. Significant effort is underway to tackle serious violence, sexual offences and harassment, robbery, and hate crime. As part of this, we have been encouraging and making it easier for customers and colleagues to report incidents so action can be taken.
‘We will continue to work closely with the police to ensure that our transport network remains a safe environment to work and travel.’