Request ID: FOI-1533-2223 Date published: 14 October 2022
You asked
Dear Transport for London,
I am writing to inquire about some statistics related to transport in the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames under the Freedom of Information Act. For each request, please could I have the data for:
i) 2016/17
ii) 2017/18
iii)2018/19
iv) 2019/20
v) 2020/21
The specific requests I have about the borough are as follows:
1) The volume of buses that pass through the borough each day
2) Their daily cost over time
3) The frequency of services (every 10/20 minutes etc)
Many thanks for your assistance.
We answered
TfL Ref: FOI-1533-2223
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 25th September 2022 asking for information about buses in Richmond Upon Thames.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.
Specifically you asked:
“I am writing to inquire about some statistics related to transport in the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames under the Freedom of Information Act. For each request, please could I have the data for:
i) 2016/17
ii) 2017/18
iii)2018/19
iv) 2019/20
v) 2020/21
The specific requests I have about the borough are as follows:
1) The volume of buses that pass through the borough each day
2) Their daily cost over time
3) The frequency of services (every 10/20 minutes etc)
I can confirm that we hold some of the information you require. However, I am afraid that it is not possible to source the requested informaton to answer all of your questions within the costs limit for responding to cases, as set out under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. Under section 12, TfL is not obliged to provide information if it would cost more than £450 to determine if that information is held, and to then locate, retrireve or extract it from elsewhere. This is calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18 hours work.
The exemption applies in this instance because the information has not been collated before and there is no quick or efficient way of doing so. Although we only hold two years worth of data (in terms of the services that actually operated on any given day), it would still exceed the costs limit to answer your questions. In order to answer your questions 1 and 3 we would need to determine how many individual services operated in Richmond on each day for the two years for which we hold data, and then the frequency of those services. With around 40 separate bus routes operating in or through Richmond we do not estimate that this would be possible within the 18 hour limit.
In order to bring your request within the costs limit you may wish to reframe it to narrow it scope and to focus on the information that is of most importance to you. For example, you may wish to name the specific service or services you are intersted in. However, before considering any revised request you may wish to review the following information which is more readily available and which may be of interest.
The attached spreadsheet details the “Peak Vehicle Requirement” (PVR) for services in Richmond going back to 2016/17. The PVR shows how many buses are required to operate a route during its peak times. For most of the routes the peak times are morning peak (typically 7 am to 10 am) and evening peak (typically 4 pm to 7 pm). At the other times less vehicles may be required as buses are less busy and may run less frequently. Note that the PVR does not indicate how frequently buses run as each route has its own frequency, schedule and length.
The following link shows current bus schedules where you can count the total number of trips and the number of buses per hour on any specific day and time period:
In terms of costs, the costs for contracted bus services are based on a “Per Annum” cost for the operation of the entire route. We do not track daily costs and we do not hold data on the costs of the services travelling through the various boroughs. The following websites provide details of contract awards and the annual contract prices for the individual route contracts:
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
