Freedom of Information Act and the Jubilee line, part 2
Long overdue, and after some to and fro between myself and TfL, here is their response to my previous request under the Freedom of Information Act:
Thank you for youremail regarding services on the Jubilee line.Having lookedat our records, I cannot find a copy of the final response sent to you and for this reason I am resending the data requested.
Question 1
I have attached a spreadsheet indicated as Question 1 to this email - this provides details of all planned track closures.
You also asked for details of work planned and work actually completed. As you may know the maintenance work on the Jubilee line is managed by TubeLines as a private company they are not required to provide information under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. Unless the information is held on behalf of London Underground in this case they hold information on work completed and work to be completed for their own purposes in terms of managing the contract with us which has a completion date of the end of this year.
Question 2 & 3
I have attached a spreadsheet indicated as Question 2 to this email - this provides details of unplanned suspensions over 15 minutes (we do not record delays below 15 minutes.
For point 2vi where you asked for details of ticket refunds based on these on unplanned suspensions. The customer charter scheme is not based on incident that caused the customer’s delay and for this reason - we do not hold the data to answer this question.
Points iv, v and question 3
We are currently in the midst of an upgrade on the Jubilee line, which will bring many benefits to the line. The improvements include a new state-of-the-art signalling system, renewed track and upgraded trains. Once completed in December 2009, we will be able to increase capacity by a much needed 33%, which will boost the frequency of services enabling us eventually to run a train every 2 minutes – as well as improving the overall reliability of the line.
I appreciate the disruption weekend works cause and we do carry out as much work as we can during the limited time we have available in overnight engineering hours. However, the massive scale of the work means that Tube Lines, the contractors responsible for undertaking the work, do need longer, uninterrupted periods in order to fully implement and test the upgrade and this is why we need to suspend parts of the line at weekends. Without these planned closures upgrading a line would take many years and we would not be able to deliver the benefits within the timeframe needed.
Whilst I appreciate the disruption these works cause, the work we are doing now will ensure we are able improve the service on the Jubilee line in the long term.
Question 4
Whilst we do have a policy or memos that I can send you regarding a policy of informing customers affected by unplanned delays and closures about their right to request refunds under customer charter. We do advertise this via our website and staff within the Customer Service Centre provide this information by phone, email and letter.
I do hope the above information is useful however if you still need further information please contact me on 0845 3309880.
Yours sincerely
I will seriously need to spend some time reading and re-reading this to comprehend it, but as I was asked by some visitors to quote the answer, I thought I would sooner rather than later, as I got it 3 days ago. Does it make sense? Not quite sure. Does it answer the essence of my questions? Again, not quite sure - I’ll just single out the fact that Tube Lines, as a private contractor, are not required to publish any data they hold under the FoI Act. Surprise - surprise!!
