Request ID: FOI-4212-2324 Date published: 12 March 2024
You asked
Hey TfL,
Many thanks for helping me out with my 5 enquiries in my past month's FOI request about School and Night Buses. This is just a follow-up of it and this time, I just wanted to ask a few questions concerning buses in general that I would appreciate if you can help me out with.
1. Firstly, I just wanted to request if you could share us a 2024-updated Geographical map of the spread of the entire TfL’s Bus Network within the Greater London boundary (including day, night, express, mobility and school routes) along with the 32 London Borough borders & River Thames, just like this one uploaded by the then Deputy Mayor of London on X.com (then Twitter.com) about 5 years ago that looks like it has been produced by TfL themselves given the Johnston font: twitter.com/Heidi_Labour/status/1152573570368921602
2. Secondly since the 20th Century, we have always had official London Bus Guides produced by TfL (& its predecessors) like in the first image attached below for Central, NW, NE, SE & SW London with detailed geographical maps & details about every single bus route in that part of London, so I just wanted to ask you why have the production of these been stopped since 2016?
Paper bus maps have been in production since the early 20th century, and have been distributed in addition to other leaflets we used to receive at tube stations like 'continuing your journey' maps showing local bus routes, or even entire Poster maps as shown below showing night bus services on an entire Greater London map as produced by TfL & its predecessors which have all stopped being produced:
3. Thirdly in reference to the pictures attached below, I had a few questions about Bus Stops and their parts, in that what are the official names of the:
• Circular Red Disk above the flagpoles (with up to 2 letters or a number), and why do not all bus stops have it?
• The 2-faced yellow 4-digit/ lettered plates on the side of the poles, and why are they not found on newer bus stops nowadays?
• The 5-digit/ lettered white stickers on the underside below the flag?
• Why do the 2-sided lights above flags seem to be getting removed nowadays as they are helpful to spot in the dark from a distance?
• I used to notice that some bus routes have coloured stripes on their tiles at bus stop flags, so what are they & why don’t they seem to be around these days?
• What are the blue buttons found below the timetable display holders & why do only some bus stops have it nowadays?
4.
4. In addition, there have been some instances where the name of a place appears below the Route number on bus stop flags instead of in the exclusive ‘Towards…’ label section of the flag even when there are only 2 routes serving the stop as shown in the images below, so what does the place name there mean?
5. I appreciate your responses to my previous FOI request a month ago and all your answers and explanations were indeed good except the enquiry about the 600-numbered School Buses having their route numbers explicitly shown on flags replaced by a more vague & generic ‘School buses stop here’ sticker which you explained is likely because of a lack of space to fit all routes, but as shown in the examples below, there are bus stops served only by 1 other bus route (or even just itself) that still shows the more generic label rather than explicitly telling us the school route number - and this appears to be the case all around London since the 2020s from my observation. Anyways, taking the example of the same 681 route - I also observed since then that replacement label of ‘School buses stop here’ on flags only appears on the daytime bus stops heading towards the school - in contrast to the afternoon-served bus stops heading back which don’t even acknowledge that ‘School buses stop here’, with the only evidence that school buses indeed serve the bus stop being the timetable displays on the bus stop, so I wanted to ask you about why is the new flag label saying ‘School buses stop here’ tile/ sticker installed only on one of the directions of bus stops only?
6. Speaking of timetables, I have seen instances where a lot of bus stops have up to 24 bus routes serving it shown on the bus stop flags - whereas the Timetable Displays on the bus stop poles are only able to accommodate a maximum of 9 bus routes’ timetables (in sets of 3 vertical display clusters) - so how does TfL decide which 9 bus routes’ timetables out of up to 24 routes get displayed on the stops?
7. Speaking of which, I have also noticed that the new timetables in blue & black since 2023 on bus stops only show the upcoming key bus stops on that route in that direction only - in contrast to the previous-style timetables until now which showed both the upcoming key bus stops in that direction, as well as the previous key bus stops the bus route has called at before arriving here (as shown in the image below for reference showing both styles together) with an orange 'you are here' pointer on the line indicating the separation of the past & future stops, in addition to arrows making the direction clear - so why don’t the new-style of bus stop timetables show the previous key bus stops the bus stops at, because that can be quite handy to know if we are on the wrong direction of the same bus route and need to cross the road and need to catch to the opposite direction of the bus route?
8. In addition, I also just wanted to ask what are the red-coloured ‘Request stop’ flags that we see instead of being titled ‘bus stop’ (even busy bus stops with multiple routes as shown below) - because all bus stops need to be requested to be halted either by signalling & waving our arm forward at the bus stand or pressing the ‘stop’ button inside buses anyways - so what is the difference?
9. Moving on as shown in the below 2 examples for your reference, the new buses of Route 111 and 281 have completely removed the rear windows in the lower decks compared to their previous models. These back glass windows are often very helpful in tracking the bus behind you if you want to interchange into it at an upcoming bus stop, so I just wanted to ask about why TfL has been removing the back windows of buses in the lower decks?
10. Finally, I just wanted to ask if you can let us know the full form of the Letter-prefixed bus route numbers (i.e. what place do they represent by that letter), and why are they so randomly numbered?
(eg. from the letters I know, Kingston borough has K1-5 orderly numbered, whereas Hounslow directly jumps from H37 to H91 for instance)
I understand that these are a lot of questions that I'm requesting information on and I understand it may have taken you a long time to read, but it has also taken a very long time for me to compile all these questions and combine them with accompanying images that I went out and clicked for your reference in order to help you understand my queries much more easily. I have had these questions for years and haven't been able to find any such answers published online, so just combined them into 1 request for you because I didn't want to keep sending you multiple requests separately every now and then and keep disturbing you, so just selected the 10 most-important enquires I wanted to request information on, because even though my questions may be very long, I feel most of them may only require a sentence or two worth of explanation.
It will be really really appreciated if you can help me out getting some information on my enquiries.
We answered
TfL Ref: FOI-4212-2324
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on15 February 2024 asking for information about TfL buses and bus stops.
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 that we hold the information you require. However, we are refusing your request under section 14(1) of the FOI Act, which provides an exemption to the disclosure of information where answering requests imposes a disproportionate burden on our resources.
This guidance includes the following advice to public authorities:
“The information Commissioner recognises that dealing with unreasonable requests can place a strain on resources and get in the way of delivering mainstream services or answering legitimate requests.”
“Section 14(1) is designed to protect public authorities by allowing them to refuse any requests which have the potential to cause a disproportionate or unjustified level of disruption, irritation or distress”.
“Disproportionate effort: the matter being pursued by the requester is relatively trivial and the authority would have to extend a disproportionate amount of resources in order to meet the request.”
We consider the process of retrieving, reviewing and collating the information to answer the 10 questions you have requested would be disproportionate to the benefit of providing it. Our principal duty is to provide an effective transport service for London. We consider that answering this request would represent a disproportionate effort, and would require the re-allocation and diversion of our resources, and places an unreasonable burden on a small number of personnel. We do wish to clarify that whilst we consider that your request falls under section 14(1) of the FOI Act, this does not reflect a conclusion that it has been your intention to deliberately place an undue burden on our resources. If you would like to re-submit a more focused, specific request then we will, of course, consider it.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely,
Mary Abidakun FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
