Transport for LondonTwitter policy
These accounts are not monitored 24/7 due to limited resources and we are unable to reply to individual tweets.
In an emergency, dial 999. To report a crime on the system, contact the British Transport Police on Freefone: 0800 40 50 40.
What to expect
If you follow us, you can expect between two to 60 tweets a day covering some or all of the following:
- Live travel information, including updates on incidents which may affect your journey or the transport system more widely
- Alerts about new content on our other digital channels (public transport updates, travel or traffic information, news, safety messages, videos on YouTube)
- Invitations to provide feedback on specific issues
- Updates during a critical incident (via @TfLOfficial) though the TfL website (www.tfl.gov.uk) should be your definitive source for information during a crisis
Our Twitter accounts
We operate the following sanctioned accounts on Twitter:
- @TfLOfficial - the official Transport for London news channel on Twitter
- @TfLTravelAlerts - live updates from the public transport network
- @TfL_Jobs - the latest employment opportunities with Transport for London
- @BarclaysCycle - the official account for information and updates from Barclays Cycle Hire, the public bicycle sharing scheme for short trips in central London
Our comment policy
We want to encourage an honest and forthright but polite and respectful conversation on Twitter. To help make that happen, please bear in mind the following:
- Don't write anything discriminatory, racist, abusive, obscene, inflammatory, or unlawful
- Don't write anything defamatory
- Avoid talking about open court cases or police investigations
- Don't use copyrighted material without the owner's permission
- Don't use this forum for self-promotion or commercial gain
To maintain a safe and welcoming environment for others, we may ask users to stop sending tweets that break these rules, and may report patterns of disruptive activity or block users where we deem it necessary.
Make the social web a nice place to be by:
- Aim to be fair, truthful and accurate
- Take issue with the opinion, not the person
- Be respective of other people's reputations
- Be gentle when pointing out someone else's error or misinterpretation
- Don't spam others - it makes it hard to have a real conversation
- Remember that tweets from TfL are written by TfL staff, who are people too
@Replies and direct messages
We welcome feedback and ideas from all our followers, and will join the conversation where we can contribute something useful. However, we are not able to reply individually to the messages we receive via Twitter.
The team reads all @replies and Direct Messages and ensures that any emerging themes or helpful suggestions are passed to the relevant people.
Twitter is an informal channel. If you'd like a formal response from us, please contact our Customer Services team via the TfL website: www.tfl.gov.uk/help.
Following
If you follow us on Twitter we will not automatically follow you back. We have chosen to do this so that you can easily identify other key Twitter users that we think are relevant and useful in our Follow list, and not because we are being impolite or disrespectful.
However, being followed by TfL does not imply endorsement of any kind.
Retweets and copyright
All content produced by TfL on Twitter, is protected by copyright. However, you are encouraged to retweet our updates provided that you acknowledge us as the source (by including RT @TfLOffical (or other TfL @username) in your tweet) and do not change the sense or misrepresent us.
We will retweet content from our partners and subsidiary organisations, and consider any requests to retweet content from others based on relevance and propriety. We reserve the right not to satisfy such requests at our discretion. Being retweeted by us does not imply endorsement of any kind.
Hashtags
Twitter users often distinguish content using key words preceded by a # sign. This enables other users to search, filter, share and collaborate on a particular topic, and partially drives the 'trending topics' shown in the sidebar of the Twitter website.
We may use hashtags when providing live travel alerts (eg. to enable filtering by Tube line), during coverage of events and in crisis communications.
In some circumstances, it is likely that a common hashtag will already have been established and we would follow suit.
We will only use existing hashtags that are directly relevant to the subject of our tweets.
Availability
Typically, our Twitter streams will be a combination of automated TfL data feeds showing service update information, and tweets produced by TfL staff on the spot.
Normally, the team will actively monitor our Twitter accounts during office hours, Monday to Friday. If the hours vary from this pattern, we will say so in the account profile.
Twitter may occasionally be unavailable and we accept no responsibility for lack of service due to Twitter downtime.
This policy
Thanks for taking the time to read this policy. From time to time, TfL will review it and may make changes to it. Please check this page periodically to make sure you are aware of any changes.
