FOI request detail

Entries and exits per quarter of an hour of all tube stations for all days from 2012 to 2017

Request ID: FOI-1582-1819
Date published: 09 October 2018

You asked

I would like to request numbers of entries and exits per quarter of an hour of all tube stations for all days from 01/01/2012 to 31/12/2017. Excel file(s) would be nice.

We answered

TfL Ref: 1582-1819

Thank you for your requests received by Transport for London (TfL) on 11 September 2018 asking for information about entries and exits per quarter of an hour of all tube stations for all days from 01/01/2012 to 31/12/2017.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm that we hold some of the information you require.

Unfortunately, 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 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.

Firstly, we do not hold all the data you have requested back to 2012. The request you have made is for a huge amount of data (tens of millions of rows) and we have estimated that it would significantly exceed the cost limit to extract the information you have requested which would also involve writing a new code in order to extract the level of data covered by your request.

However, annual demand data is available as open data on our website using the following links: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/tfl-rolling-origin-and-destination-survey and https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/open-data-users/our-open-data.

In accordance with section 21 of the FOI Act, we are not obliged to supply you with a copy of the requested information as it is already accessible to you elsewhere.

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. If you want to refine your request or make a Freedom of Information Act request in future, please bear in mind that the Freedom of Information Act allows you to request recorded information held by us. You should identify the information that you want as clearly and concisely as you can, specifying the types of document that you are looking for. You might also consider limiting your request to a particular tube station or period of time.

Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, we do 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 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

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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