TfL Ref: 1837-2223
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 31 October 2022 asking for information about the scheduling of bus services.
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 the information you require. You asked:
For the bus route W7, please can you disclose whether there whether there has been a decrease to the number of buses being run?
We can confirm that there were no schedule changes to route W7 over the last number of months, nor has there been a reduction to the service
To specify, please can you disclose the number of buses scheduled to run, and the buses that have been run from August, September, and/or October 2022, depending on how you collate data.
Please see the attached spreadsheet providing all scheduled and actual bus trips (vertically) and actual departure times from each stop (across), presented by direction of each route. This covers the period from August to October 2022.
Message are provided if a trip or part of trip was not recorded by the iBus system. These are split into two groups: “trip operated” if the bus operated the trip in service, but for some reason was not recorded by the system, and “trip lost” if the trip (or trip segment) was not operated. Each “lost” trip is accompanied by a reason. The most common reasons for these are heavy traffic causing severe delays to bus journeys and return trips, mechanical break downs and for example, unavailability of staff, or public events for instance.
Can you also confirm that the actual buses running are the only ones being fed through to live bus update apps?
We can advise that all trips which show vehicle numbers were fed into the Countdown system, as listed in Column G.
Whilst any trips classified as “Operated, no time available” and without vehicle numbers were not fed into the Countdown system, these buses were being run
Additionally please can you describe why there appears to be a marked increase in "phantom" buses on this route, or in other words, buses that appear on the schedule but never arrive.
Data relating to services terminated halfway during their journey that were fed into the Countdown system, might have appeared as “expected” at bus stops covering the remaining part of the route, because the iBus system might still be expecting these journeys to arrive but not realising they were in fact curtailed at short notice.
Additionally, any trips that were diverted (“Operated on diversion”) and fed into the Countdown system, might have appeared as “expected” at certain stops, however, because the buses had to take an alternative route due to the diversion in place, the usual stops were not served.
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
