Request ID: FOI-0498-2122 Date published: 19 August 2021
You asked
Please can I be provided with copies of documents relating to the trial of the new bus sound launched in 2019 including the evaluation of the trial and decision on whether to adopt the sound.
If the sound or another sound has been adopted please can you confirm if these are now mandated on the electric bus fleet and the 100 bus in particular. Please can I also be provided with a sound file of the adopted sound.
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2019/december/tfl-to-trial-innovative-new-bus-sound-to-improve-road-safety
We answered
Our ref: FOI-0498-2122/GH Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 10 June 2021 asking for information about the trial of electric bus sound. Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy. I can confirm that we do hold the information you require. However, to provide the information you have requested 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 requests if we estimate that the cost of determining whether we hold the information, locating and retrieving it and extracting it from other information would exceed the appropriate limit. In this instance, we estimate that the time required to answer your request would exceed 18 hours which, at £25 per hour (the rate stipulated by the Regulations), exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’. You have requested ‘copies of documents relating to the trial of the new bus sound’. This information is potentially held across a variety of different areas of the organisation. Therefore, to locate the information you have requested, we conducted a remote search for all emails relating to this topic. This would result in identifying a large number of emails, each of which would need to be manually reviewed to see if they were in fact relevant to your request and then extract and compile those that are relevant. This search would only identify emails, and further searches would need to be carried out to identify any other relevant documents which are held. To help bring the cost of responding to your requests within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider refining your requests to concentrate on matters which are important to you. Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, TfL does not have to answer your question if it would require the creation of new information or the provision of a judgement, explanation, advice or opinion that was not already recorded at the time of your request. If you have specific questions relating to this topic we may be more easily able to respond to these than to a request for any information held. We can however, confirm that it is a legal requirement (under UNECE Regulation 138) to have this type of alerting system on new quiet running buses, all operators here and elsewhere must incorporate it. In the case of London, we have developed a specific Acoustic Vehicle Alerting System (AVAS) sound which is required on our routes. This applies to new pure electric and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles for instance, regardless of whether they operate on route 100 or elsewhere. The TRL AVAS report ‘Bus Safety Standard: Acoustic Conspicuity’ is available on our website here: https://content.tfl.gov.uk/acoustic-conspicuity-avas.pdf There is also information about AVAS in the Bus Safety Standard Executive Summary you can read here: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/bus-safety-standard-executive-summary.pdf and how AVAS features in our new vehicle specifications for London in this FOI: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparency/freedom-of-information/foi-request-detail?referenceId=FOI-2180-2021. If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal. Yours sincerely Graham Hurt FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
