00:00Transport for London has reported that it was removing approximately 4,000 pieces of graffiti per day on the Central and Bakerloo tube lines.
00:14The organisation said it was dealing with a significant rise in vandalism on its trains, which had created additional challenges in maintaining cleanliness on the underground network.
00:27TfL explained that the number of trains operating on the Central line had been reduced due to an ongoing upgrade programme with five trains being refurbished at a time.
00:40It also noted that the Bakerloo line, which operates the oldest fleet in the network, was seemingly affected and running fewer trains as well.
00:50Now, as a result, TfL stated that it had been forced to return some of the trains to service, still bearing graffiti, in order to maintain the current timetable.
01:03Without doing so, it indicated the regularity of the service would be disrupted.
01:08According to a report by the BBC at the Hainault Depot, the team reported they had been working around the clock, having removed 23,000 pieces of graffiti over the previous two months.
01:27Now, these statements from TfL have come after videos were circling on social media showing how supposedly easy it was to clean the graffiti off the tubes.
01:37It's difficult to think this isn't a response to those videos, with some calling out London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
01:46But is this part of a bigger problem? Is London a clean city?
01:50Well, I took to the streets to ask locals and visitors how clean they thought the capital was.
01:56Yeah, you do see a lot of stuff dumped on the road regularly.
02:02I will say, you know, because I've been quite negative, just in London's defence, if you look at other European capitals, London actually is relatively clean in that respect.
02:12So I will give them credit for that.
02:14But again, if there's fly tipping, then there's an issue.
02:17So to come back to focus on London, if there's fly tipping, there's an issue, so something does need to be done.
02:23Not so much in London, but in some of the suburbs, yes.
02:27Bikes thrown down, the bikes that are stacked, thrown down.
02:32A lot of garbage all over the side streets.
02:35A lot of empty bottles, empty cans, straws.
02:39At the end of the day, it's all about increasing accessibility to where you can safely throw away rubbish.
02:47But at the same time, if you need to put out fines to stop fly tipping, then that's something you can also do in combination with other things.
02:56Thank you very much.
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