(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 You might have just spent £3000 on an area guide for Consett for example, and it's immediately out of date because they've needed to tweak a couple journeys on the 47.

See, I don't agree. At the risk of sounding like Roger French, I think they are essential as part of a package.

I know of two companies than went to a uni open day. One took a proper timetable and the other took a piece of paper with a QR code to a link (which didn't work). I can tell you the bin was full of the QR codes and the timetable booklet were exhausted (and not binned).

It is also a drop in the ocean compared to the overall turnover of a medium to large bus companny. It's certainly not the timetable leaflets fault if an operator can't schedule it's services properly.

Of course, they are the first thing a bean counter looks at when trying to save some money when said service changes are a disaster.