Case study 05

London transport crime: fifteen years of pattern

Tools Tableau, Excel Dataset TfL transport crime, FY2009/10 to FY2023/24 Scope 904,790 reported crimes Deliverables Three Tableau dashboards, deck, one-page exec summary

The question

Where does crime concentrate across London's transport network, how has it moved over fifteen fiscal years, and what would that mean for how policing and surveillance resources are allocated?

Approach

Three Tableau dashboards built as a drill-down: an executive overview, a trend analysis with a monthly heat map, and an advanced view of mode-level concentration. The deck pairs each dashboard with its findings and closes with resourcing recommendations. TfL deck · exec summary

Findings

904,790 reported crimes, concentrated in few modes

Bus accounts for 53.5% of reported crimes (270,107 incidents), with London Underground carrying the second-highest volume at 108,498. Crime distribution is concentrated rather than spread evenly across the network. TfL exec summary

A seasonal pattern that repeats

The monthly heat map shows recurring patterns year over year, with crime peaking around October and November. The top crime months cluster toward the end of the calendar year. TfL trend dashboard

A rising long-run trend

Crime volume generally increased over the study period, with FY2023/24 recording the highest volume of the fifteen years analyzed. TfL trend dashboard

Recommendation

Weight police presence toward buses during the October and November peak, focus surveillance on the highest-volume Underground routes, and hold a yearly trend review so any intervention's effect is measured against the fifteen-year baseline rather than a single year.

What this analysis does not claim. Reported crime is not the same as total crime, and the dataset's average crime rate metric depends on TfL's own exposure basis, so rate comparisons are treated more cautiously than volume comparisons in the write-up. This is a public dataset project, and no policing outcomes are claimed.

Dashboard

Executive overview: 904,790 total crimes, mode volumes, and crime rate by mode
Executive overview: 904,790 total crimes, mode volumes, and crime rate by mode
Trend analysis: fiscal year trend, monthly heat map, and top crime months
Trend analysis: fiscal year trend, monthly heat map, and top crime months
Advanced analytics: crime share, top modes, and the volume-versus-rate risk matrix
Advanced analytics: crime share, top modes, and the volume-versus-rate risk matrix

Artifacts