20 things we learnt from TfL FoI requests in October 2025
1) Since the start of April there have only been four days that the Central line hasn't been disrupted by a train defect. 2) Last year mobility bus 969 carried a total of 1935 passengers (an average of nine per journey). On the return journey the driver departs the stop early over 50% of the time. 3) In the last 12 months, TfL staff worked a total of 1.6 million hours of overtime. 4) Of the 63,311 penalty fares TfL issued last year, 24% were successfully appealed against. 5) Train drivers are currently paid a salary of £71,160 for an average of 1759 hours work per year. 6) Last year TfL earned £1,817,653 from gambling adverts across the network, up from £310,671 in 2017/18. 7) Over the last 15 months TfL has spent £235,000 on paid media with social influencers and £107,045 on content for its own social channels. 8) 16 withdrawn DLR vehicles have been sent for scrap since the start of August, and two more are scheduled to go in the first week of November. 9) At St James's Park tube station, there has been no cost to "change signage to add a second ‘S’ to the word ‘James’s’" because these changes date back to the 1950s, you absolute muppet. 10) Of the 22.87km of new bus lanes delivered since April 2021, the longest are the Silvertown Tunnel (3.29km) and St Helier Avenue in Sutton (1.6km), and the shortest is Moor Lane in Chessington (30m). 11) Friday is the busiest day of the week through the Silvertown Tunnel. 4% of vehicles through the tunnel are HGVs. 12) 16 bus routes are based at Northumberland Park, the most for any depot. The next two are Battersea and Orpington, both with 14 routes. 13) Platform height on the Elizabeth line's central core is 1100mm. "Had the trains been built to match the 915 mm platform height used across much of the National Rail network, this would have resulted in a step-up at Heathrow, compromising accessibility and operational consistency." 14) The Bakerloop vehicle, stop and shelter branding costs for service launch were £170,184.47. 15) This year the lifts at Elephant & Castle have broken down more often than the lifts at any other tube station (136 breakdowns), followed by Victoria (104), Stratford (97), Wembley Park (84) and Liverpool Street (70). 16) The boroughs receiving the greatest funding for highway schemes over the last five years are Camden, Enfield and Hackney. The boroughs receiving the least are the City of London, Kensington & Chelsea and Tower Hamlets. 17) The busiest bus stops on route D8 (southbound) are Stratford Bus Station, All Saints Church, Hancock Road (Bow Tesco) and Bow Church. 18) TfL's controversial 60-second social media video about travelling with cats, titled 'Paw-sitive vibes only', cost £2000 (of which 80% went to the creator and 20% to their management company). 19) In a survey about the Highway Code conducted in February, 86% of Londoners knew that 'Drivers must give way to pedestrians on a zebra crossing' but only 56% knew that 'Drivers should give way to pedestrians crossing or waiting to cross a road into which they are turning.' 20) If you submit 44 FoI requests over a three year period, and your latest unhinged screed includes a desire to identify the tube map design on a jigsaw, TfL will claim this to be a 'potentially vexatious request' and refuse to answer as "we see no public interest in expending the necessary resource to answer these latest sets of lengthy questions".
