How has TFL contributed to Cycle and Buslane schemes in London
Request ID: FOI-2042-2122 Date published: 07 January 2022
You asked
I asked your Customer Services and they said they would not give the info and I should use a F.O.I.
The question is specific
How much has TFL paid towards Buslanes and how much to Cycle schemes in London
This is a valid request, it appears to me that you are trying to avoid answering or just delaying giving a response, which time should be based on the date of the FOI request and not on some unspecified response date as a result of your email now
We answered
TfL Ref: FOI-2042-2122
Thank you for your request of 7th December 2021 asking for information about TfL spending on bus and cycle lanes.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.
Specifically you asked to know how much “hasTfL contributed to cycle and bus lane schemes in London” for “The most recent 12 month period available…. and if it is easily available the previous 12 month period”.
I can confirm that we hold the information you require. However, I am afraid it is not possble to source it within the cost limit for responding to FOI cases as set out under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. Under section 12, TfL is not obliged to provide information if it would cost more than £450 to determine if that information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract that information from elsewhere. This is calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18 hours work. In this case the exemption applies because there is no quick or efficient way of sourcing the information. For example, we do not hold collated data on spending on the construction of cycle lanes alone. Rather, the data we hold on spending on cycling schemes per year includes all spending including for those projects where no cycle lane was constructed - such as where we have changed traffic signals, changed road layouts or closed roads, or implemented traffic restrictions. To identify specific spending on the construction of cycle lanes alone we would need to review the individual records for somewhere in the region of 50-100 separate projects, which cannot be achieved within the 18 hour costs limit. Sourcing the equivalent information for bus lanes would add to the burden further.
In order to bring your request within the costs limit you may wish to narrow its scope to focus on the information that is of most importance to you - for example, by focussing on a specific project rather than spending across the board. Note that there is already information in the public domain about spending on cycling schemes more generally - such as the response to this Mayoral Question which provides data for spending on “cycling highways and other facilities in the Capital” between 2016 and the end of March 2021:
