Follow on from FOI-1700-1920 I will clarify that I would like the journey times in seconds, even though I can convert the timings myself, and this would be for average off-peak and peak journey times between stations. This would be to accurately map the timings to your Unified API for your arrival predictions. This data is not available elsewhere because the timings are approximations of a general service, not accounting for peak and off-peak service types.

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TfL Ref: FOI-2036-1920

Thank you for your email which we received on 20 October 2019 asking for information about average journey times between stations.

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 do hold 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 cost limit to provide a response to your current request. We do hold the raw data but we are unable to provide an average of actual times achieved across the network or to ascertain whether a good or degraded service was operating, as this would require a manual analysis and extraction of the data.

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.

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 train movement events form part of the TfL live data feeds (https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/open-data-users/) so you may be able to accumulate a dataset of this information using publically available information. This is also true of the London Overground and TfL Rail Services, but using Network Rail Live Data Feeds. For both of these data sources, there is likely to be a systematic difference between the times of recorded events (which actually occur at the closest boundaries between signal sections) and the wheel start or stop at the adjacent platform. This can be calculated by observing a small number of trains at the location and then applying the average difference between the time recorded on data feed and those of the sample of observed movements.

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

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