TfL Ref: 1872-2021

Thank you for your request received by us on 14 December 2020 asking for information about London Underground passenger data for the purposes of academic research.
 
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:

• Entry/exit data per station 1) for each hour of the whole day (hourly data) and 2) for the whole day (daily data). We would like this data for each day in the following period: 23 March 2020 to 20 October 2020. The stations from which data is extracted include all the stations of London Underground.

• Data will need to be at a disaggregated level (not aggregated at a line or network level). Any data entry of 4 or fewer people can be replaced with, for example, ‘#’.

In accordance with the FOI Act, we are not obliged to supply the data requested for 2020 at this time as it is subject to a statutory exemption to the right of access to information under Section 22 of the Act.  In this instance the exemption has been applied as this information  is intended for future publication.

I can advise that we will be publishing a full breakdown of London Underground passenger usage statistics for 2020 presented in a quarterly hour basis at: http://crowding.data.tfl.gov.uk/ in the coming months as per our normal publishing schedule.

This exemption is subject to a public interest test, which requires us to assess whether the public interest in applying the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure. In this instance, it is considered that the public interest favours the publication of this information, in context and according to the pre-determined schedule, rather than in response to your request, to ensure the information is provided accurately and in an accessible manner.

In the meantime it is possible to ascertain approximate daily passenger usage information for each London Underground station, although these are daily figures rather than the hourly figures you are seeking. They are published in the Network Demand Report for entries and exits via the link below:

https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/coronavirus-publications?cid=coronavirus-publications#on-this-page-0

By following the arrows to the ‘Demand by Travel Mode’ page and clicking on ‘Demand by Station Type’, select the London Underground station of your choice and this will produce a graph illustrating the ‘Number of Taps Per Day’ for the chosen location. Additionally, by hovering your mouse along the base of the graph, a pop-up message will feature stating the date and number of daily taps recorded for the selected station.

If you are considering submitting a further FOI request please think carefully about whether the request is essential at this current time, as answering FOI requests will require the use of limited resources and the attention of staff who could be supporting other essential activity. Where requests are made, please note that our response time may be impacted by the current situation.

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