Maybe we all need to enjoy the availability of these various timetable books while we can.
I've seen it proposed on another website (for timetable buffs) that the days are numbered for printed timetables, and indeed for transport schedules presented in traditional tabular form.
The idea is based on assumptions that:-
- "everyone" now has a smartphone, or other device, and can download some sort of real-time or timetable app,
- a normal punter is only concerned with his/her own departure & arrival times and has no interest in the full schedule for the bus or train's journey,
- every last penny has to be squeezed out of the operating costs of businesses, and government agencies (transport-related or not).
Updating, printing and distributing paper timetables for normal, day-to-day trains and buses, whether as booklets or individual leaflets, might be seen as an avoidable cost and be progressively and quietly eliminated like paper bank statements and utility bills.
Airlines like BA & Lufthansa used to print timetable booklets, but these are long gone, and I understand there are no traditional timetables available (either hardcopy or in electronic format) for TGV services in France. Here the only option seems to be entering origin/destination/date/time into drop-down boxes on a web-based journey planner.
This obviously will be an issue for anyone interested in seeing anything beyond the bare bones of their proposed journey, anyone trying to plan options & alternatives for complicated trips and makes it very hard for those interested in this sort of thing to archive historical info on train services, even from last month, never mind 25 years ago.
Does anyone agree that printed timetables will go the way of the Yellow Pages and LU ticket offices in the not-too-distant future?