(03 Jan 2023, 2:55 pm)Adrian wrote You're probably looking at £500 per 10,000 timetables, not only for the printing but the folding process. Multiply that by the number of services, and again by the number of changes (even tweaks) every year, and it becomes a small fortune.

The area guides that they produced won't have been cheap either. Probably looking at £2000-£3000 per 5000, for the print and post-processing.

Of course none of this includes the cost of design or any studio work. 

Whilst I think paper timetables are nice to have, they don't really serve any purpose when an operator is not disciplined enough to avoid frequent timetable (or price) changes. You might have just spent £3000 on an area guide for Consett for example, and it's immediately out of date because they've needed to tweak a couple journeys on the 47. 

Or branding or vehicle changes. 

I get that business needs change, but there's that balance between instant reactions (which inevitably fall out of reliability and a subsequent renumbering and seems to happen too often - see Consett again) and adapting to suit passenger needs (which doesn't seem to happen that often or at all).

Subsequently, those timetables or guides that have had thousands allocated for in the latest budget, are obsolete. The business case for the next lot suddenly becomes a lot weaker too.

Was it September 2021 when they produced that huge guide, distributed them to homes across the region and then became obsolete within weeks due to changes they hadn't factored in or planned just a few weeks prior?