Commissioner of TfL, Andy Lord, admitted that graffiti has increased on the Central and Bakerloo lines in recent months in a report due to be presented to the transport body’s board next week.
He said that every week TfL was currently removing more than 1,000 pieces of graffiti on the Bakerloo line and more than 2,000 tags on the Central line.
Across the Tube network, one act of graffiti is removed every 11 minutes on average.
“We always remove graffiti from our network as quickly as we can, with offensive graffiti removed as a matter of urgency,” he said.
“Our approach includes both routine cleaning and responding to reports when we receive them.”
He claimed that TfL had a “comprehensive response” in place to address graffiti, including removing tags and ensuring a “robust security response”.
In recent months, passengers have expressed their shock over “widespread” graffiti on London Underground’s ageing Bakerloo line trains.
A TfL spokesperson previously said: “Where graffiti cannot be removed easily, it is covered wherever possible and cleaned during engineering hours, in order to keep trains out on the network and minimise delays to our customers.”
The current fleet that runs on the line is 52 years old, making the trains the oldest in regular passenger service in Britain.
TfL has said it wants to replace the ageing trains and said that Government funding announced last month would allow it to “progress discussions” on the project.
Transport bosses hope they can press ahead with the upgrade soon so that they can tag the new trains onto the current Siemens order to build a modern Piccadilly line fleet.
A business plan submitted to the Department for Transport last year suggested that the project could cost £1.8 billion.
TfL also wants to secure funding for an extension of the line to Lewisham.
