Buses changing destination in transit

Our Ref: 1006168707

Date: 06.04.2010

B Greening

[1][FOI #30498 email]

Dear Mr Griffiths

Thank you for your email received by Transport for London (TfL) on 10
March 2010. You have asked for information about buses changing their
destination while in transit (curtailments).

Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of
Information (FOI) Act and I can confirm that we do hold the information
you require.

Unfortunately, to provide the information you have requested, in parts 1)
and 2) of your email, would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450
set by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations
2004.

Under section 12 of the FOI Act, we are not obliged to comply with a
request if the cost of determining whether we hold the information,
locating and retrieving it and extracting it from other information would
exceed the appropriate limit. This is calculated at £25 per hour for
every hour spent on the activities described.

We have estimated that it would cost £7290 to provide a response to your
current request. This is based on the number of hours required to extract
the requested information.

The information requested is at individual journey level. Approximately
50,000 bus journeys are operated on behalf of TfL each day – that is
over 18 million journeys for the 12 month period covered by your request.
Unfortunately this information is not held electronically, and would need
to be extracted manually from 'hard copy' lost mileage returns submitted
by bus operators. There is one lost mileage return per bus route per week
– that is around 520 documents for the period requested.

To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450
limit, you may wish to consider narrowing its scope so that we can more
easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking. For
example, you may wish to focus your request by being more specific about
the particular information you wish to obtain and including relevant
dates/timeframes.

Please note that we will not be taking further action until we receive
your revised request.

In regards to point 3) TfL does not consider this situation as a breach of
contract. TfL’s Conditions of Carriage makes it clear that bus routes
may be subject to change without notice.

Section 4.1 of the Conditions of Carriage explains this and has been
provided below for your information.

We always try to run reliable services. Sometimes buses and Underground
trains cannot be run at the times or frequencies advertised for reasons
beyond our control or that of our contractors. We reserve the right to
change timetables and bus routes and to stop Underground trains from
running to a particular station without giving notice beforehand. We will
only do this for good reasons and, if it happens, we will do our best to
tell you why.

In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your
request, please do not hesitate to contact me.

If you are not satisfied with this response, please read the attached
help-sheet entitled ‘Your Right to Appeal’

Yours sincerely

Patricia Mitchell

Head of Customer Services

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