please empty your brain below

‘All trains to Canary Wharf run at something-ty nine’ - except those at nine and nineteen minutes past the hour....

I hate the dumbed down timetables, but also being forced to use google maps style bus maps; the PDFs are increasingly hard to find, but are invaluable if you're planning a trip and want to look at all the options.

Fortunately there is some help online from independent websites; full timetables are available on londonbusroutes.net, for example the timetable for the 96 from Bluewater is here: http://www.londonbusroutes.net/times/096full.pdf

Busmap.org has proper bus maps available for purchase; the TfL ones are still buried on the website, but I bet they're on the way out given how hard they are to find.

i hate how journey planned is unable to cope with where i live -- halfway between Ealing Common and West Acton station.

Geographically speaking i am *slightly* nearer to Ealing Common, so when i use my address it ALWAYS goes to Ealing Common to route me somewhere, not considering that if i'm prepared to walk a minute more to West Acton station and take the central line, my journey will be quicker.

i also hate the phrase "simpler, easier to read" (it's right up there with website redesigns that state that they have a 'cleaner, fresher look'), which is basically code for "We've changed something that worked perfectly well already, thanks".

Is it an urban legend that back in the 70s, one LT route was advertised as 'about every 59 minutes'?

Whilst what you say may be true I think you have missed a major point in all this. In the past the objective was to run to the timetable. Nowadays on more frequent routes the objective is to provide a regular evenly-spaced out service. With modern technology, (GPS, iBus etc) this is now possible. Whilst notionally there is a timetable, in many cases the line/route controller primary objective is to run an evenly-spaced service. What is advertised is the primary objective and that is what performance is measured against.

On top of that the planned timetable is slowly becoming less important as people gradually start to have access to real-time information. At the end of the day, or even during the middle of it, what you really want to know is at what time will your bus/train actually turn up.

I worked as a "Data Maintainer" on the Journey Planner system for TFL from its launch until 2007. I can tell you for a fact that every bus time, every tube time and every DlR time was loaded into the system train by train, station by station, and for buses, timing point by timing point. But although the system knew all this info, it was deliberately designed to hide it or generalise it when displaying information to the public. Very annoying and very frustrating

When I were a lad (the 1980s) a publicly-available printed timetable was issued for each Underground line. How they are missed.

I remember seeing (as it came as surprise) the "about every X minutes" timetables on bus stops on Gower Street when I went to London as a teenager back in 1987, on I think, the 74 bus route.

If they have been "dumbing down" they have been at it for the last 25 years.

Have you seen the Marey timetables mentioned by Edward Tufte? Unbelievably concise, easy to read and even compare train speeds. To save you buying the book for just this one example (though Tufte's stuff is excellent), you can see what I'm talking about in this post here: http://www.joeparry.com/blog/?p=204

I like the old style timetables, but then I was brought up with them in the 50s & 60s. I'm bright enough to be able to understand them. If I can I still get the proper timetable for a service. But even back in the 60s there were many people who got confused by the timetables. And now people have neither the time nor the patience, nor indeed the understanding, to cope with them and need the simper version. But then back in the 50s our parents said the same about the fact that we weren't taught Greek as well as Latin.

Surely a timetable is unnecessary for the Underground and the DLR anyway? The virtue of a Metro system is that you can turn up and expect a train within a reasonable amount of time - ten minutes being about the limit. A timetable would show this but it would be a series of repetitive numbers - as you say, "something nine" repeated as nauseum throughout the day.

Buses are a different matter, though. Waiting at a metro stop you have confidence that one will turn up eventually. At a bus stop, you don't know if you've missed it, if it's late, and so on, all while you're stood in the rain next to the road. An accurate timetable (and a next bus indicator) are a Godsend in this case.

That Blackwall one is awful - not immediately obvious how often trains run to Shadwell or Canning Town, and certianly no less complicated than a conventional timetable.

What can be equally annoying is where mainline railways insist on the timetable format where a metro would be more sensible. There is no point in SWT announcing delays to specific London-bound services at Wimbledon or Vauxhall, where they run every three minutes or so, and all go to the same place - no-one is waiting specially for the 0828.

I've been used to the "approximately every 7 minutes" format on the buses for decades. The vagaries of traffic mean precise timings are unlikely to be reliable, although I think it would be more honest to say "8 buses per hour" given their herding instincts.

Dumbing down or not they are much easier for us foreign types. ;-D

The tube does have timetables, they're called 'working timetables' and TFL go to great lengths to keep them from you,

If you badger them enough with a freedom of information act though, you can get printed copies off of them.

One day, the day will come when they will just offer up complete electronic copies of them. One day ...

You produce some lovely poignant pieces Diamond Geezer, but sadly this was not one of them. As at least one person has pointed out in these comments, what people want is to know where the bus (or tube or DLR) is and when it will turn up. We have much better technology for this nowadays called indicator boards, Countdown machines and (for those lucky enough to have smartphones) clever apps that show us exactly how long it is until the next bus, tube, DLR or train will turn up. In addition we don't end up pointlessly cutting down trees. It's actually progress if you open your eyes and stop dreaming of a past that never really existed - just like the comment that implied most people in the 50s learnt Latin and Greek.

Another topic that those outside London can't believe Londoners would moan about.

In most parts of the country, you are lucky to get a timetable at a bus stop at all. If you do, it is often for both directions so that the person putting it up doesn't have to expend any brain power working out what piece of paper goes what side of the road, and no indication of what side of the road you need to be on to get said bus.

With regards to London, I think I am right in saying that anything over a 20minute frequency has its actual times stated? Given the nature of London traffic and the fact that controllers will want to space out buses to stop the '3 at once' syndrome, surely knowing some mythical 'intended' timetable is actually a hinderence rather then a benefit?

@Lewis - you are, of course, spot on. However, I don't believe dg was 'moaning', just making a point. Mind you, his comment about having to "turn up and wait", for possibly nine whole minutes would engender rather derisory comments from those outside the capital !

Yes, there are all sorts of real-time alternatives to timetables these days, for those fortunate enough to be connected to them.

And yes, it may sound laughable to complain about a "turn up and wait" service when the maximum wait is nine minutes.

But I don't need to wait nine minutes if I can plan ahead. When a precise timetable exists, why hide it?

Incredibly, when they changed (dumbed down) timetables about 12 years ago, they were just going to put night bus frequency on each timetable (most are 1/2 hourly) - simpler to produce. I was in a meeting with the then head of bus strategy and made him see sense of putting exact times at each stop for all the obvious reasons.

Oh, and I'm the proud owner of a full set of working timetables - 1/2 minutes and all (c1990). And, journey planner is great - up to a point...

I like traditional timetables and it is a real shame that they are not produced for London. I know people struggle with reading them but I see people give up trying to understand the "dumber" stop specific panels too.

In this age of so many ways of delivering information I find it most odd that choice is so restricted. If TfL published a timetable book I would happily pay for it. Years ago I worked in a Travel Centre and the regional timetable book and map were "best sellers". Whenever the new edition was published we would see out within hours.

I know the net has changed things but having wasted an hour trying to fathom out bus routes in East Kilbride and having to refer to 4 different websites to get to the up to date info I'm not sure the web is such a great info channel!

Journey planners and real time info are great supplements but they still rely on detailed timetable info existing. If the systems are down then having a paper timetable is the back up system. As DG says - if it exists then publish it.

Lewis' last paragraph is spot on. The timetable for tube and the more intensive bus services is useless. I would place a pretty good wager that at peak times services keep to the schedule less than 70% of the time. For anything at the 5 an hour and over level, it's irrelevant. The slip time on an individual service is frequently more than half the time to the next one on the bus services, rendering any timetable pointless. All you need to know at the 5 an hour level is that, on average, you will wait 6 minutes for a service. Given slip time, this will likely be the same if you're going to a timetable or just randomly turning up.

Exception granted for DG's Bluewater example. No excuse at the end of the line, I think.

No need for timetables on a route of any sort where the frequency is 10-12 minutes or more frequent. No point, too, given the vagaries of London traffic. Turn up and go. Check Countdown if you get worried.

I used to live on a railway line where there were five trains a day. Now there you need (you remember!) a timetable.

@ Johnny English...no, not everybody learned Greek and Latin, but till the early 60s a pass at Olevel,as it was then called, in Latin, was essential for Oxbridge entry, so all grammar schools taught Latin, at least to the upper forms.


"mobile-friendly lowest common denominator":

In their infinite wisdom(!), whoever designed the new National Rail website has decided that mobile users MUST use the cut-down mobile version, even if their smartphone is more than capable of handling the full site.

I think it is in Prague where the Communist wisdom decreed that the train indicators on the metro didn't tell you how long till the next train, just how mcuh time had elapsed since the last.

@Adrian - I've found using Firefox on an HTC Android that the normal National Rail URL takes me to the main site. In fact I was using this one regularly until a friend smirkingly pointed out that there was a mobile version!

@Meg - It is definitely done in Prague. I've found it strange to get to a platform and find out just how closely I've missed a train - almost as if it were taunting me!

Full timetables for me, please. Londonbusroutes.net website is a godsend, particularly for the start and end of the day where the timetable is likely to be being kept to (not as much traffic) but TfL still insist that "every 8-12 minutes" is acceptable.

I also fail to see how a "real" timetable is hard to understand. Look at start time, look at end time. Job done.

Countdown? Not in east London, mate!

Still why not text for details at your own expense?

Try traveline south east (www.travelinesoutheast.org.uk).

You can get the same info as in London, and quick access to maps and timetables via the "Find a Timetable" button. The PDF route maps have had to be disabled for now, sorry, but we are working to restore them and you can continue to use the HTML route maps. Try DLR, and be pleasantly surprised by the Blackwall timetable.

For wholly London services, we are restricted to what TfL produce so the timetables for the underground aren't significantly different, but outside of London - e.g. on the 96 at Bluewater - you can get a matrix timetable.











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