Freedom of Information request - Bus Occupancy Details
Request ID: FOI-1596-2223 Date published: 18 November 2022
You asked
Dear Transport for London,
The DfT reports show Bus Occupancy reducing from around 20 in 2010 to 18 more recently.
Can you give more detail on how this occupancy is distributed by time of day or week?
E.g. what is peak hour weekday occupancy, overall weekday occupancy and weekend occupancy.
ScatteraCities is encouraging non London Authorities to increase occupancy 50%, I know TfL is outside their scope, but I believe you have the best bus statistics available to help interpret this number into practical targets, as clearly for many, increasing peak time occupancy by 50% would be impossible.
We answered
TfL Ref: 1596-2223
Thank you for your requests received by us on 4, 19 and 22 October 2022 asking for information about bus occupancy levels.
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.
Following some clarification, the following information was requested:
Thank you for your quick response and pointing me to your FoI archive. Request ID: FOI-1314-2223 Date published: 21 September 2022 has some similarity to my request but it is for a few specific bus routes, whereas I am more interested in the overall picture (all buses and weekends) and the occupancy of individual buses in the time period rather than the average occupancy in the period (as I can’t see how many buses were involved or their max occupancy).
However for my purposes, just providing the same data but for the 10 bus routes that carry the most passengers would help, and adding a matching table with the same rows/columns but recording the max occupancy in the periods, would almost certainly be all I need.
In reference to your initial request mentioning that ‘The DfT reports show Bus Occupancy reducing from around 20 in 2010 to 18 more recently. Can you give more detail on how this occupancy is distributed by time of day or week? E.g. what is peak hour weekday occupancy, overall weekday occupancy and weekend occupancy’, we can advise that Transport for London does not hold this information as the source of data is provided by the Department for Transport, which uses their own definition of bus occupancy. For example, the DfT Public Service Vehicle Survey bases their definition of bus occupancy on passenger miles divided by bus vehicle miles.
In response to ‘the 10 bus routes that carry the most passengers’ please find attached the requested data for the top ten bus routes. Amongst the spreadsheets are the maximum observed occupancy per bus averaged for time periods in Weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays, for each route’s direction of travel.
Please also note that the spreadsheets attached are for the same period of time as that given previously to FOI Request: 1314-2223; covering 14 November 2021 to 11 December 2021.
The top 10 routes that carried the most passengers during part of the financial year in 2021/22 refer to bus services: 9: 18,149, 29, 243, 36, 5, 207, 25, 86, 279.
The time periods for Weekdays included in the attached zip file are the same as previously given for FOI request:1314-2223. However, time periods for Saturdays and Sundays are as follows:
If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for any reason, please do not hesitate to contact me.
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
Jasmine Howard FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
