TfL Ref: 2878-1819

Thank you for your email received by us on 26 January 2019 asking for information about quarter hourly entry and exit counts for all London tube stations on a daily basis during 2017 following your previous request for information (reference: 2510-1819).

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy.

Unfortunately, to provide the information you have requested would still exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. This is because we do not hold any ready-made codes or reports that can be used to provide this data in the format requested. Consequently, there is a significant volume of data that would need to be extracted, which we estimate would be a data set of over 37 million rows. The data set would then need to be manually extracted, reviewed and suitably processed for the purposes of your request.

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.

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. For example, you may wish to limit your request to a maximum of 20 London Underground stations and a date range of a few weeks in 2017.

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 us. You should identify the information that you want as clearly and concisely as you can, specifying the types of document that you are looking for. You might also consider limiting your request to a particular period of time, geographical area or specific departments of the organisation.

Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, we do 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 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 as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed.

Yours sincerely

Jasmine Howard
FOI Case Officer
Information Governance
Transport For London