Public transport timetable
Typically, the timetable will list the times when a service is scheduled to arrive at and depart from specified locations.
[1][2] From 1981 to 2010, Cook also produced a similar bi-monthly Overseas volume covering the rest of the world,[3] and some of that content was moved into the European Timetable in 2011.
If the service is scheduled to wait, both arrival and departure times might be shown on consecutive rows.
Other information may be shown, often at the tops of the columns, such as day(s) of operation, validity of tickets for each service, whether seat reservations are required, the type of vehicle used (e.g. for heritage railways and airline timetables), the availability of on-board facilities such as refreshments, availability of classes, and a service number.
Transport schedule data itself is increasingly being made available to the public digitally, as specified in the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format.
This is less likely to apply at peak times, when the priority is optimum utilisation of available vehicles and staff.
In some cases public transport operators do not publish public timetables for busy times of day, or they may simply state "services run every 3–5 minutes" (or words to that effect), which is the norm for buses in some cities such as Hong Kong even during off-peak hours.
A monthly timetable book of major trains, some bus and ferry services in Europe.
A bi-monthly timetable book of major trains, and some bus and ferry services outside Europe, ceased December 2010.
These thick books - the February 2009 edition of the JTB timetable, for example, contains 1152 pages - are published every month and cover all stations and trains of JR and private railways, as well as long-distance bus, ferry and air services.
Published every month and covers all trains, highway bus, ferry and domestic air services.
Currently the dates for the European train timetable changes are usually the Sunday of the second weekend in June and in December.
In the months leading up to the changeover date booking will be restricted as some railway operators are sometimes late loading in the new data (between several weeks and a few days before the change).
One of the most comprehensive European-wide timetable information is provided by the electronic timetable search engine of German Railways Deutsche Bahn[9] (information is also available in Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Polish, Spanish and Turkish).
The same information, but differently presented, one also find on the online timetables by the Swiss Federal Railways[10] (in English, German, French, and Italian) and the timetable by the Czech Ministry of Transport[11] (in Czech, and - however not to every detail - in English and German).
The user interface as well as all Swiss railways stations, and bus, boat, cable car stops are transparently available in German, French, Italian, and English spelling.
[14] The final printed all-line timetable was produced by Network Rail in 2007, after which versions were published both by the Stationery Office and Middleton Press.
