All the TfL stations in the London borough of Kingston
None. Nil. Nada. Not the tube, tram, Overground, Crossrail, DLR... nothing.
All the TfL stations in the London borough of Sutton
This is Beddington Lane tram stop which is in Sutton. It's only justin Sutton, indeed if you walk out of the tram stop and turn left and step onto Mitcham Common you're now in Merton. What's more it doesn't serve a useful part of Sutton, merely a vast industrial hinterland of trading estates, depots, warehouses, energy facilities and sewage works. Other than the 80 houses clustered near the tram stop, no other Sutton resident lives within a kilometre of the place. It might as well not be in Sutton for all the use it is, but it is and it's operated by TfL so it counts towards our total.
This is Therapia Lane tram stop which is in Sutton. The platforms are only justin Sutton, indeed if you cross the tracks at the eastern end of the tram stop you've stumbled into Croydon (which is where I took my photo). What's more even fewer Sutton residents live near this tram stop than the paltry number at Beddington Lane because once again we're on the industrial/logistics/tradepark/tramdepot fringe. It's much more useful for residents of Broad Green in Croydon, so might as well not be in Sutton for all the use it is, but once again it counts towards our total of two.
That is if you're willing to accept a tram stop as a station. Some would argue that a pair of light rail platforms don't constitute anything as substantial as a station, in which case the bad news is that Sutton has no TfL stations whatsoever either and you can chalk that up as our second borough with zero.
All the TfL stations in the London borough of Richmond
This is Kew Gardens station which is in Richmond. It's comfortably in Richmond on the Richmond spur of the District line, and close enough to Kew Gardens to be brimming with botanical tourists daily. It's a somewhat disjoint station comprising two entirely distinct platforms joined only by a confined subway and a narrow footbridge, and countless geriatric botanical tourists would very much prefer it to be somehow step-free but it isn't. Kew Gardens is well known as the only tube station with a pub on its platform, The Tap On The Line, although the need to secure ticketing validity means there's no longer any access between pub and platform so all you can now do with your pint is peer through the window. Just outside the station are some lovely shops like a proper butchers, a proper bookshop, a proper florist and all sorts of bohemian eateries, but I also noticed several posters urging residents to support the Richmond Food Bank because not everyone in Kew can afford to throw money away in lovely shops.
And Kew Gardens is the only TfL station in the London borough of Richmond. One other Richmond station is on the tube network and that's Richmond, but Richmond is a National Rail station managed by South Western Railway so lies outside TfL's operational domain. You might consider this a technicality in which case you could argue the number of TfL stations in Richmond is two, but by my technical definition the total is a measly one.
All the TfL stations in the London borough of Bexley
This is Abbey Wood station which is in Bexley. It's only just in Bexley, indeed the full length of the platforms is in Greenwich, as are the steps up to the ticket hall, as is most of the operational side of the ticket hall. The Bexley/Greenwich boundary cuts north-south through the ticket hall just before the gateline, approximately bisecting the broadest part of the main station building (i.e. across the foreground of my photo). The Bexley/Greenwich boundary was drawn as a straight line across marshland long before Thamesmead existed, when Harrow Manor Way was just a track to the Thames rather than a throbbing residential artery, so the modern division of the estate (and the station) may look perverse. Whatever, you can't catch a train without being in Greenwich and you can't exit the station without being in Bexley, so Abbey Wood bats for both boroughs.
But Abbey Wood is the only TfL station in Bexley, even if partially so. It's only a TfL station because of Crossrail, and it's already a TfL station because they took it over way back when Crossrail was supposed to open even though it hasn't yet. Technically you could argue that only 10% of Abbey Wood is in Bexley so Bexley only has 0.1 TfL stations, but because it's a crucial 10% I'm happy to round that up to one.
Kingston: definitely 0 stations Sutton: 2 tram stops, no genuine stations Richmond: 1 TfL station, 1 other tube station Bexley: 1 station entrance
So that's four London boroughs with no more than five TfL stations between them (and arguably fewer than that). Between them they have a population of 820,000, or just under 10% of the entire population of London, and yet the number of TfL stations they contain can be counted on one hand.
And this matters because fares between non-TfL stations tend to be higher than fares on the tube. Here are four sample journeys within these four boroughs and how much they currently cost, off-peak, compared to how much they would cost under standard TfL tariffs.
Approximately speaking that's a 50% fare surcharge for living in a 'non-TfL' borough, which is a shockingly large disparity. It's all a legacy thing and just how things happen to have evolved, and also would be terribly difficult to equalise because of economic expectations, but it's still jarringly unfair. And yes these boroughs all have other railway stations, plus they all get a comprehensive bus service so they're not missing out entirely, but Transport for London does serve certain parts of London far far better than others.
Other boroughs with fewer than 10 TfL stations 4: Barking & Dagenham 5: Wandsworth 6: Greenwich (imminently 7) 7: Havering 8: Bromley (of which 5 are tram stops), Hounslow, Lewisham
n.b. As for the borough with the most TfL stations that's Westminster with over 30, probably because that's where the densest part of the tube network is. Tower Hamlets and Newham are close behind (thanks to the DLR), and also in the 20-somethings are Croydon (thanks to the tram), Ealing and Brent.
