"Following the killing of Daniela Raczkowska on 18.01.18 while she was crossing the road on a flashing green pedestrian light, can you please provide a list of all pedestrian lights where the phasing includes a contemporaneous flashing green for pedestrians and flashing amber for motor traffic? Can you highlight the instances where the lights are placed on roads where there are two or more lanes to the same direction?"

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TfL Ref: 3097-1920

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 14 January 2020 asking for information about pedestrian lights.

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.  You asked for a list of all pedestrian lights where the phasing includes a contemporaneous flashing green for pedestrians and flashing amber for motor traffic, highlighting the instances where the lights are placed on roads where there are two or more lanes in the same direction.

Crossings with the feature you describe are known as pelican crossings. The Department for Transport removed pelican crossings from their list of approved designs for signalised crossings in 2016, which is the same year that Pedestrian Countdown at Traffic Signals was authorised nationwide as an approved signal design (it was approved for use on TfL’s road network in December 2013). The last pelican crossing to be installed on TfL’s road network was in January 2012. Some London boroughs continued to choose pelicans as the design for crossings on their roads. The last new pelican site was installed in February 2015 by London Borough of Barnet.  Additionally, there are several crossings which had already been programmed before the January 2012 cut off date which is why they have an installation date of after January 2012.

London has a legacy of pelican crossings which are gradually being replaced through various investment and modernisation programmes. TfL takes a risk-based approach to the prioritisation of investment funding, and our Vision Zero policy places a high priority on improving locations on the road network where risk is highest.

Please see attached a list of the 847 pelican crossings we have which includes site ID, location, date of installation and whether or not the signals are on our road network (the TLRN, Transport for London Road Network). Please note that the installation date column on the spreadsheet refers to the installation of the controller, not the crossing itself.

However, to provide the remainder of 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 significantly exceed the cost limit to provide a response to the second part of your request. This is because our system does not record whether each of our pelican crossings are on a two, three or four lane road.  Therefore in order to extract the information you have requested, we would need to manually review each of the 847 crossings. Using a conservative estimate of 5 minutes reviewing time per crossing, this would considerably exceed 18 hours to accurately compile this 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 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

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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