I would like to see data by day and month in 2019 for the performance of the District Line. I have reason to believe that the service is frequently delayed severely and TFL is not being transparent about its performance. The data I am requesting is raw data of service frequency and not what you consider a “good” service. This is too often a misnomer. In anticipation,

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TfL Ref: FOI-0948-1920

Thank you for your email received by Transport for London (TfL) on 2 July 2019.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy.  I can confirm we do hold the information you require. You asked:

I would like to see data by day and month in 2019 for the performance of the District Line. I have reason to believe that the service is frequently delayed severely and TFL is not being transparent about its performance.

The data I am requesting is raw data of service frequency and not what you consider a “good” service. This is too often a misnomer.

Submit the raw data for all hours as TPH and also the number and duration of times the service has been “suspended”, “minor delays” or “severe delays”.

Upminster Richmond branch is the one that I use mostly and it is very clearly having severe delays too often. Please provide evidence as to this branch.

Unfortunately, to provide all of 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 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.

We have estimated that it would take approximately 22 hours to provide a response to your current request.

Whilst we are able to run a report on scheduled and actual trains on the Upminster/Richmond branch by hour and by day and could supply this to you, in order to provide the number and duration of times the service has been suspended, had minor or severe delays, we would have to manually retrieve and review each and individual service report and extract this information for the time period you require. To provide this break down would involve a member of staff having to physically check 7 months worth of data, by day and hour and record it in a spreadsheet. As a result we are applying section 12 to your request as a whole and give you the opportunity to revise your request so that we can respond to it within the £450 limit.

Lost Customer Hours (LCH) is the performance metric we use to measure disruption on the network experienced by customers. It is an aggregate of the duration of disruption and the number of people affected for all delays greater than two minutes. We are committed to providing customers with details of how well the network is working and we regularly publish a performance update. This is updated every four weeks. Please see our website at https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/underground-services-performance

To help bring down the cost of responding to your request, you may wish to consider narrowing its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking. You might also consider limiting your request to a shorter period of time.

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.

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

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

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Eva Hextall

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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