Please provide any information you hold on the extent to which bus services can make up for lost capacity when an Underground line is suspended; in particular, information on the current capacity (eg in passengers / hour) of scheduled bus services at peak time along the corridor served by each Underground line outside Zone 1 in relation to the peak loading (passengers / hour) on that Underground line.

---

Our ref: FOI-2026-1819/GH

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 4 November 2018 asking for information about bus services.

Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy.

I can confirm that we do hold the information you require. However, 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 requests 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. In this instance, we estimate that the time required to answer your request would exceed 18 hours which, at £25 per hour (the rate stipulated by the Regulations), exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’.

Bus services are run on TfL’s behalf by bus operators. The routes run to a specific timetable, and therefore cannot be suddenly increased if services are unexpectedly suspended on the tube. Whilst we record the performance of each bus operator, we do not record the information in a way which would readily enable us to answer your request.  To provide you with the information you have asked for, we would firstly need to identify which bus routes operate along each underground line. This itself would be difficult and subjective as bus routes do not necessarily run along the length of London Underground lines. Once the routes had been identified we would need to look at the scheduled bus services at peak times for each route and their capacity, and collate the bus usage for each route in order to see what spare capacity would generally be available on each bus route. You have also asked for ‘any information…’ which in itself would require an extensive search for any relevant information.

Furthermore we would then need to look at the usage on each London Underground line, which is a huge task in itself. To help bring the cost of responding to your requests within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider refining your requests to concentrate on matters which are important to you.

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. If you have specific questions relating to these topics we may be more easily able to respond to these than to a request for any information held.

If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Graham Hurt

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

Back to top

---