Request ID: FOI-0818-2223 Date published: 01 August 2022
You asked
I’m writing to ask if the newest Car Line Diagrams (CLDs) as of July 2022 for all of Underground, Overground, DLR, Elizabeth Line are available in PDF form? The website https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/car-line-diagrams only shows diagrams up to 2015. Newest additions such as Northern Line Extension and Elizabeth Line diagrams are missing.
We answered
TfL Ref: FOI-0818-2223 & TfL Ref: FOI-0819-2223
Thank you for your requests received by Transport for London (TfL) on 6 July 2022, asking for car line diagrams (CLDs).
Your requests have been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we hold some of the information you require.
Unfortunately, to provide the rest of the diagrams 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 a request 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. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described.
Collating the CLDs from 2015 would be very time consuming. We have estimated that it would significantly exceed the cost limit to provide you with a response. The diagrams are not held centrally, therefore we would have to manually review material in various files, some of which would have been archived, to locate and collate them. Whilst we cannot be certain that all copies of the CLDs since 2015 will be held, we expect that, if they are held, some of them would be archived due to the time that has elapsed since their creation. Also, it would be difficult to determine at what point we could satisfy ourselves that the information was not held once the process of reviewing the information is underway.
Also, from 2015 we haven’t updated all of the car line diagrams because we don’t tend to update the entire artwork, due to the cost of print and installation of the products on the fleet, instead we have made updates with stickers on the physical maps.
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 might consider limiting your request to a shorter period of time.
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
Eva Hextall FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
