Please provide: A) the timetable for all Metropolitan line trains leaving Finchley Road for a standard Tuesday in August 2019. The timetable showing the origin and destination of each train, and its timetabled departure time from Finchley Road. B) the actual Metropolitan Line departures from Finchley Road on Monday 2nd and Tuesday 3rd September 2019. This should include the train’s origin and intended destination, time of departure from Finchley Road and the time of arrival at the destination. Where a train’s destination was changed after its departure from Finchley Road, please include the details of the change (the updated destination, when the change was announced to the passengers on board, where the train was at the time of the announcement, and the time of arrival at the updated destination) C) The number of lost customer hours on the Metropolitan Line on Monday 2nd and Tuesday 3rd September 2019 D) The number of drivers who were trained and certified to operate the Metropolitan Line trains for full length of the Metropolitan Line train at mid day on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd September 2019 E) The number of different Metropolitan Line drivers included on the driver roster for the week of 15th May 2019

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TfL Ref: 1671-1920

Thank you for your request received by us on 4 September 2019, asking for information about London Underground’s Metropolitan line service.

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. You asked for:

A) the timetable for all Metropolitan line trains leaving Finchley Road for a standard Tuesday in August 2019. The timetable showing the origin and destination of each train, and its timetabled departure time from Finchley Road.

The information you asked for is available on our website using the following links to our Working Timetables at:

https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/working-timetables

An alternative timetable format can be found here: https://tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/timetables/

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.

B) the actual Metropolitan Line departures from Finchley Road on Monday 2nd and Tuesday 3rd September 2019. This should include the train’s origin and intended destination, time of departure from Finchley Road and the time of arrival at the destination.

Please see the attached spreadsheet for details of train departures from Finchley Road on Monday 2 and Tuesday 3 September 2019, which includes the following:

• Actual arrival time

• Actual departure time

• Direction

• Destination

• Train and trip number.

Please note that due to a technical circuit recording issue at Finchley Road, northbound data for 2 September 2019 was not captured on our reporting systems. However, this was rectified in time for 3 September, as shown in the attached file.

C) Where a train’s destination was changed after its departure from Finchley Road, please include the details of the change (the updated destination, when the change was announced to the passengers on board, where the train was at the time of the announcement, and the time of arrival at the updated destination)

I can advise that passenger announcements are not tagged for content and timings, therefore it is not possible to provide details on when changes to destinations were announced to passengers.

We are refusing information on requested changes to destinations under section 14(1) of the Act. Providing arrival times at each destination and cross referencing it to see if the destination has changed would require conducting a manual search called ‘Follow a train’ that shows the time every train arrives and departs a station during the day, inclusive of destination. The Metropolitan line runs up to 48 trains at a time and consequently we would have to extract 48 individual reports for 2-3 September. This would result in several pages of documentation that would need to be reviewed for each individual train. Each report would then need to be scrutinised for the purposes of locating the details to match with train times and destinations. However, these reports do not take into account that for example, a train may have been reformed to a different train number, which would make that particular service difficult to identify for the purposes of your request when reviewing this scheduling data.

Whilst transparency is a vital part of our work, we consider that to undertake the necessary collation, review and extraction of data needed to answer this part of your request, which as previously explained is not recorded in the format you have requested, would place an unreasonable burden on our resources.

Our principal duty is to provide an effective transport service for London and we consider that answering this part of your request would require disproportionate effort. It would be a significant distraction from our work managing the TfL network, requiring re-allocation of already limited resources and placing an unacceptable burden on a small number of personnel. We do wish to clarify that whilst we consider that this part of your request falls under section 14(1) of the FOI Act, this does not reflect a conclusion that it has been your intention to deliberately place an undue burden on our resources.

Therefore, due to the wide ranging scope of your request, we are refusing this part under section 14 of the FOI Act.

D) The number of lost customer hours on the Metropolitan Line on Monday 2nd and Tuesday 3rd September 2019

During Monday 2 September there were 72,821 Lost Customer Hours and on Tuesday 3 September there were 73,926; please note that these values are subject to change pending further analysis and investigation.

E) The number of drivers who were trained and certified to operate the Metropolitan Line trains for full length of the Metropolitan Line train at mid day on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd September 2019

Whilst every train and line operator has been trained and certified for operational purposes, as part of our commitment to safety, we accompany train operators with an instructor for a short period of time. Therefore we have interpreted this question on the basis that you are asking for how many operators were able to drive on their own. As the reporting systems we use are updated on a live basis not all of the above dates are captured in our reporting systems. Therefore we can only provide this information for 1 and 4 September only, which is listed below:

     Date:                           Operators:
1 September:                         78
4 September:                        103

F) The number of different Metropolitan Line drivers included on the driver roster for the week of 15th May 2019.

During the week of 15 May 2019, data from 12  to 18 May 2019 was analysed and we can confirm that were 204 different drivers deployed on the Metropolitan line.

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
Information Governance
Transport For London

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