Train surfers on your network
Request ID: FOI-1978-1819
Date published: 07 November 2018
You asked
In the past ten years how many recorded occurrences of train surfers riding on trains have occurred on TFL trains (London Underground / London Overground / TFL Rail / Docklands Light Railway / Croydon Tram)?
For each occurrence please include:
• The date.
• The time.
• The location.
• The line it happened on.
• The type of train (stock or class of train).
• Whether or not the person was identified and prosecuted.
We answered
Dear
TfL Ref: FOI-1978-1819
Thank you for your email received by Transport for London (TfL) on 26 October 2018.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. I can confirm 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.
We have estimated that it would considerably exceed the appropriate cost limit to provide a response to your current request.
Firstly, there is no central incident reporting system across all the areas that you have requested the incident data for. For some modes, retrieving older data would require going back to the previous service provider’s records to carry out a manual trawl of their incident data to determine which were concerning train surfing incidents. Some records were held on paper based systems so we would need to visit our physical archives and retrieve the incident reports for the period in question. In respect of Trams and DLR, "train surfing" is not a specific category and therefore it would be difficult to answer your request, without having to review individual incidents.
Please note we do not hold information on whether the person was prosecuted or not if they are caught. I would recommend you contact the British Transport Police (BTP) for this information.
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 Transport for London. 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 shorter period of time, geographical area or specific departments of TfL.
Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, TfL does 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 note that we will not be taking further action until we receive your revised request.
In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your request, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Eva Hextall
FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
In the past ten years how many recorded occurrences of train surfers riding on trains have occurred on TFL trains (London Underground / London Overground / TFL Rail / Docklands Light Railway / Croydon Tram)?
For each occurrence please include:
• The date.
• The time.
• The location.
• The line it happened on.
• The type of train (stock or class of train).
• Whether or not the person was identified and prosecuted.
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