Historic GPS Location Data for specific Bus routes
Request ID: FOI-0936-1920
Date published: 16 July 2019
You asked
To Whom it may concern,
Please could you release the historic GPS location data for the 153, 360, 507 and 521 bus routes at a 5 minute interval if possible from the 1st of November 2018 to the 1st of June 2019.
We answered
TfL Ref: FOI-0936-1920
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 1st July 2019 asking for historic GPS data for certain bus routes.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.
Specifically you asked:
“Please could you release the historic GPS location data for the 153, 360, 507 and 521 bus routes at a 5 minute interval if possible from the 1st of November 2018 to the 1st of June 2019.”
I can confirm that we hold the requested information. However, we estimate that to provide it 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, and then locating, retrieving or 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, meaning the £450 threshold equates to 18 hours work. While the raw data to answer your question is held in our systems, obtaining it in the format requested would require weeks if attempted manually, and the development of a new automated reporting mechanism would take an estimated minimum of 3 working days. Note that the number of individual items of data captured in your request would number in the millions.
To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider narrowing or reframing its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely,
David Wells
FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
Back to top
