TfL Ref: FOI-2263-2425
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 14th October 2024 asking for information about accidents caused by people with children’s buggies using escalators on the London Underground.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.
Specifically you asked:
“Please, can you provide information about how many accidents were caused by people with children’s buggies using the escalator in the past 12 months?
I have witnessed more than one incident - including one today - of people carrying buggies in the escalator during rush hour, stopping at the end, and causing others to trip and fall on top of each other. I am aware that TFL tries to advise people to use lifts when lifts are available, but many ignore these signs and posters and still carry the buggies, in a very dangerous manner, on the escalator. That was the case today, as lifts are provided at Kings Cross.
I am starting a petition with the London Assembly to consider stronger regulation or penalties to those who do this and selfishly put other citizens in danger.
I would appreciate if TFL could provide any commentary and figures: What are you doing to prevent accidents? And how often these accidents are happening?”.
I can confirm that we hold the information you require. However, I am afraid that to provide the exact information requested would exceed the costs 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 the requested information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract it from elsewhere. This is a calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18 hours work.
In this instance the exemption applies because the information has not been collated before and there is no quick, efficient or automated way of doing so. Rather, we would have to manually review all incident reports relating to escalators on the London Underground an individual basis to determine which specifically involved people with buggies. Over the last 12 months we have a record of 2,400 escalator incidents on the London Underground. It is not possible to review all of these to see which involved buggies within the 18 hour costs limit.
Notwithstanding the above, you may be interested in the related request that was answered earlier this year and which is published on the FOI pages of our website here:
https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparency/freedom-of-information/foi-request-detail?referenceId=FOI-4643-2324
As you can see, this response provides more general data about incidents on escalators over the last 5 years, and includes information on what we are doing to minimise such incidents.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely,
David Wells
FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
