Don't Worry : It's All On-line.

And you can print it out.

One of the arguments from the penny-pinching meanies in TSY Towers is that they don't need to produce timetable leaflets because they are so easy to download and print out. Of course the Elsie Miggins's of South Yorkshire may not have a computer or, if so equipped, may not be able to download and print out.

Bad enough then for bus timetables, but what about rail? The TSY people used to produce some excellent route by route railway timetable booklets. These also have been expunged from travel information history.

So how easy is it to get hold of the required timetable pages?

Timetable finder
Use our timetable finder to search for your
local bus, tram or  train  timetable by entering a:
service number, for eg X78
local area name, for eg Meadowhead
road name, for eg City Road.

Let's have a go ...

... with the following result.

Wonderful. The 50/50A and 252 buses do not run to Dronfield at all and there is no mention of the hourly train service. Perhaps we need to enter a more detailed location.

No, equally fruitless. Maybe we need a South Yorkshire station as Dronfield is across the border in Derbyshire - shock horror.

No rail in Chapeltown either. In fact, fbb could not find any current rail tables anywhere on the "award winning" (ha, snort, ha!) web site. This blog was prepared before today's timetable changes, hence "current" means "current at time of writing."

So current rail timetable information is simply not available on line, despite the misplaced optimism of the "Timetable Finder" paragraph quoted at the head of this blog. But we could find upcoming rail information.

Changes to bus, tram and train services in South Yorkshire
Bus, tram and train services change throughout the year. The next scheduled changes are to rail services which will take place from Sunday 17 May 2015. Timetables for these services are available to view or download in the table below.

Got it?

What the TSY folks have done is to provide links to the individual rail company's timetable OR/AND to the excellent booklets produced by West Yorkshire Metro. So far, so good.

But what about Doncaster? It is some time since fbb lived in Sheffield but he thinks trains still run between Doncaster and London, Doncaster and York, Newcastle and Edinburgh, even Doncaster and Bradford. But apparently the TSY gnomes have forgotten that Doncaster is in South Yorkshire.

None of these are on the list.

Let's peruse, for example, the East Midlands Trains leaflet.

There are 57 pages to trawl through and the table shows links York (occasion journeys from Scarborough), Nottingham, Beeston, Belper, Leeds, Wakefield, Langley Mill etc none of which information is, in any way, of use to a South Yorkshire rail traveller.

The hourly train for Corby is equally irrelevant. fbb wonders who would want to download all 57 pages. Although not the fault of TSY, there is a second half of the leaflet which includes second set of dates for Saturday times and Sunday trains for part of the year only.

It is a mess and needs simplification for the average northerner.

Then we have two versions of services between Nottingham, Sheffield and Leeds. They are from Northern Rail ...

... and Metro (i.e. West Yorkshire).

They both contain similar information, but are presented very differently. Well done TSY for spreading confusion.

Then we have ...

... trains to Hull; and ...

... Northern leaflet 34 which, despite the on-line heading, doesn't contain any trains between Sheffield and Hull. Its only relevance to the area is the sparse service between Sheffield and York via Pontefract.

And finally. Has anyone at TSY ever heard of a train company called, erm, Cross Country?

Don't they run a train or two via Sheffield. Perhaps even to York, two trains an hour!

Travel South Yorkshire's rail information was never ideal, but it is now appalling. Here is fbb's suggestion for the web site.

 Next bus blg : Monday 18th May