TfL Ref: FOI-2283-2021 Thank you for your further email of 1st April 2021 asking for information about changes to the 384 bus route. Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. Your questions and requests for additional information are addressed below: Point 1: Can you please confirm, taking into account the wording of my specific request under Question 1, that TfL hold no other data since the beginning of 2016 of communication between the Jewish Secondary School and TfL, including requests/suggestions/wishes for any route changes, including but not limited to changes to the route that actually took place. I can confirm that we have provided you with everything we have found that falls within the scope of the question. The material was found via an automated search of emails held on TfL servers that contain the keyword “384” to/from any email account using the Jewish Secondary School email suffix since the beginning of 2016. Point 2: Can you also confirm that for Question 3 there has been no specific comments by Metroline drivers and other staff that have been submitted to TfL about experience of changes to the route, other than the non-specific comment in the last paragraph of the 4 September email? There is no particularly easy way for us to categorically search for all the correspondence /comments that TfL may have received from Metroline employees. The request was therefore put to our Bus Performance Management team as the most likely recipients of any such material, and what they provided was given to you with our response. Note that we consider it more likely that if drivers/other Metroline staff had any particular comments to make about the changes then they would have made them to their employer rather than TfL. Point 3: Regarding Question 4, I have noticed what appear to be some errors in the information supplied: The 'daily loadings' document for Period 9 2020 has exactly the same list of stops and hail-and-ride sections as the document for Period 9 2019. This is despite the routing of the 384 having changed in August 2020 so that many of these stops and hail-and-ride sections no longer exist, such as 'Monks Avenue', 'Lyonsdown' and the hail-and-ride sections around them. Therefore I cannot meaningfully interpret and compare the data in these documents. Could you please ask the buses department to supply an accurate 'daily loadings' document for Period 9 2020, that assesses daily loadings along points on the routing that has been in places since August 2020? Please find attached the daily loadings for Period 9 2020 as requested (note that this is the weekday average loading per bus). Point 4: You comment on the table that you have provided for total usage, that 'based on this and July vs November actuals, demand has increased on route 384 due to the changes': - Firstly I am unclear why you decided to add this comment, as I merely requested data that I can interpret myself. - Secondly, the July 2020 usage (which I did not request) shows zero as the average load of passengers between Barnet Everyman Cinema and Cockfosters both eastbound and westbound. The table does not show how long a period is being assessed in July, but even accounting for demand suppression due to Covid, I cannot believe that an average of zero people were using the 384 between these two stops then, so surely this must be an error (unless the 384 was diverted away from this entire section for this entire assessment period, in which case usage information would not be indicative of anything useful anyway)? I know that on 24 July there were certainly people using this section - TfL will have records that I and others attended a tour of the route with Director of Public Transport Service Planning, Geoff Hobbs and his colleague on this date. Seeing as you included usage for July 2020, please could you ask for accurate average loading figures between Barnet Everyman Cinema and Cockfosters to be provided for that period (actual and scaled up for Covid)? I am also assuming for the ninth column of the table that the heading should read '2019 Period 9 actual' rather than '2020 period actual', as the figures are identical to those in the seventh column? The July data provided previously was for a single day, which is all that we hold for this month. Therefore, it did not show demand from the 24th July when you travelled. Further, we cannot provide you with data for the whole of July 2020. The single day data for July 2020 that we hold is attached. We do not have this data scaled for pre-covid demand. In terms of the table provided in the text of the previous response, you are correct that it should have read “2019” P9 data rather than “2020”. - Thirdly, it is clear from the table that demand has in fact not increased for the 384 between Barnet Everyman Cinema and Cockfosters since the change in routing, but rather has dramatically decreased, by 29% overall and 40% eastbound. I asked for the figures between these two stops as it is between them that the largest sections of the previous routing were removed. While some decrease in passengers might be expected due to the new routing between these two stops being somewhat shorter, it should surely be of concern to TfL that such a dramatic reduction in usage has taken place in such a short time, especially as Geoff Hobbs anticipated that new passengers would be attracted to the route between High Barnet and Cockfosters because of the shorter length. I believe this shows that the new routing between Barnet Everyman Cinema and Cockfosters is far less useful to previous users of the 384 along this section, and that many are now unable to complete their necessary journeys by using it. This alone should make TfL seriously consider restoring the 384 to its previous routing as a matter of urgency. It is too early to draw full conclusions from the data due to the pandemic and, more generally, because it takes time for new routeings and their customer base to become established. If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for any reason, please do not hesitate to contact me. If you are considering submitting a further FOI request please think carefully about whether the request is essential at this current time, as answering FOI requests will require the use of limited resources and the attention of staff who could be supporting other essential activity. Where requests are made, please note that our response time may be impacted by the current situation. Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed. Yours sincerely, David Wells FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London

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