Printed timetables in pocket-format remain essential

According to The Times on March 1, within a decade London Underground-style countdown displays on platforms will supersede traditional rail timetables throughout the country.

It seems Network Rail Chairman Sir Peter Hendy recently said that the increased frequency of trains would make predetermined timetables obsolete on most of the rail network, and that passengers will increasingly turn up and wait for the next train, rather than book for a specific service.

I wonder what he really meant by “most of the rail network”. OK, it’s not going to work in Thurso - although perhaps Transport for London would simply have a poster saying “first train 0650, last train 1632; frequency approximately every two-to-four-hours”!

However, the inference that you’ll no longer book a specific train implies that Hendy does consider it will happen on intercity lines. Well, I’d love to abolish the whole concept of booking, and it is true King’s Cross-Edinburgh is half-hourly, but I can’t see any East Coast operator abolishing reservations, advance fares and its timetable, and simply telling people they must turn up at King’s Cross, buy a ticket from a machine and look at the indicator for the next train.

Consider more intensive services such as Brighton to London. Frequent yes, but each with a different stopping-pattern, going to different London termini and run by different operators.

You can’t just say “next train to London ten minutes”. Whose? Where in London? With respect, I feel Sir Peter Hendy’s views are inevitably coloured by his time as Commissioner of Transport for London, for there really are very few National Rail corridors that emulate the sort of service offered by the Tube - frequent and with all trains calling all stations.

In any case, I have always viewed TfL as archaic when it comes to timetables, and certainly not a model to copy. The Metropolitan Line is a classic example - on the fringes, station indicators cop out altogether on destinations, with entries such as “Chiltern Train” or “see front of train”.

Where it is useful National Rail already does it selectively, such as the “next fastest train to Paddington” indicators at Reading, but certainly for over 95% of the National Rail network proper timetables are a must.

That also means printed timetables. A large majority of users now possess a Smartphone, yet many operators literally have print-runs of pocket timetables that run into the hundreds of thousands (and many tell me take-up is not diminishing).

Most commuters at work need exact times of trains home and in a convenient pocket format, not have to do a Smartphone journeyplan every time they work late. Thameslink might well soon have 30 trains an hour, but for many users only a handful of those will take them home.

The industry must not be influenced by a Network Rail academic aspiration.