Traffic light sequence report for A96 Aberdeen: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/18/01581
Date received: 6 June 2018
Date responded: 4 July 2018

Information requested

Traffic Light Sequence Report or similar document which provides the following information:

i. the sequence of lights
ii. the time interval settings for each phase in the sequence of the lights
iii. any variation or alternatives to the above settings, e.g. at different times of the day;

controlling the junction of North Anderson Drive and Ashgrove Road West, and including the above information for each of the traffic flows, i.e.

i. northbound (coming either from south on North Anderson Drive or east from Ashgrove Road West)
ii. southbound (coming either from north on North Anderson Drive or east from Ashgrove Road West)
iii. eastbound (coming from the north or south on North Anderson Drive).

As the information you have requested is 'environmental information' for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

Response

In response to your request, please refer to Annex A which is the configurations for A90 Aberdeen, Anderson drive/Ashgrove road traffic lights.

The traffic lights site is on a Split Cycle and Offset Optimisation Technique (SCOOT). SCOOT is an online urban traffic control system. In urban areas where traffic signals are close together, the co-ordination of adjacent signals is important and gives great benefits to road users. Therefore the stage lengths and cycle time will be variable due to the nature of SCOOT. In addition there may be other differences between the configurations and the controller if any changes have been made on site via a handset for example, phase minutes or intergreens.

We have appled exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) to some of the information contained within Annex A because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998. This exception is not subject to the 'public interest test', so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

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FOI-18-01581 - related documents.pdf

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44 page PDF

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408.9 kB