Request ID: FOI-2419-2324 Date published: 02 November 2023
You asked
F/on from FOI-2030
In light of this response, I will reduce the number of years I am asking for from five to two. Could you please provide the requested information for only2021 and 2022. On the basis of your explanation, that should lower the cost of completing this request by 60 per cent.
I look forward to hearing your response.
We answered
Our ref: FOI-2419-2324/GH Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 6 October 2023 asking for information about bus lane removal. 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, whilst you have reduced the scope of your request from five years to two, to answer your revised request would still 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’. As previously advised, the requested information is not centrally recorded. Therefore in order to answer your compile this information we would therefore need to identify all projects and changes to road layouts for the 2 year period requested, and then identify if these involved any bus lane removal, and if so, whether these stretches of bus lanes were replaced with cycle lanes. It should also be noted that in some cases, whilst bus lanes may be removed from a specific location, they may be introduced at other locations meaning that the total length of bus lanes may actually increase. Whilst these removals are likely to be minimal, we do not record this information in a way which allows us to report on the specific information you are seeking, without undertaking a huge manual task of assessing and reviewing a significant volume of data cross-referenced from various different systems to then manually compile the information you have requested, which would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. 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
