FOI/19/02435 · FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Traffic movements at various bridge locations: EIR release
Information requested
You asked for
‘Data on the average number of daily, weekly, monthly or yearly traffic movements at the following locations in each of the last five years:
The A87 Skye Bridge The A9 Dornoch Bridge The A9 Cromarty Bridge The A9 Kessock Bridge
Data on the average number of daily, weekly or monthly traffic movements on the A90 Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route in 2019.’
Response
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.
Please refer to Annex A of this response, noting that where there are gaps in the data, these are due to equipment unavailability on these dates and locations. The data is collected (and therefore presented) in ‘vehicles per day’ and is split by direction at each of the locations identified.
For the 4 bridge locations, we have provided the data from 1 January 2016 onwards, on the assumption that you are interested in the calander year periods.
About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.
Detected exemption language
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.