You know what TfL's We Can't Be Arsed To Print That Any More department is getting rid of now?
First and last trains.
Previously the timetable poster at Mile End station would have included details of the first and last trains from the station, information which can be very important if you're travelling late or early, but now they don't. Instead the new posters urge you to go away and look up the first and last trains online. The top suggestion is to download the TfL Go app and look there, and the second suggestion is to go to tfl/gov.uk/timetables. If you use the QR code it takes you to tfl/gov.uk/timetables, so that's essentially the same as the second option. But if you don't have an enabled device the times of first and last trains have effectively disappeared.
Here's the kind of thing you used to see.
This is a poster from the southbound Northern line platform at Bank station. Trains start around 6am and run until 0038, it says, except on Sundays when nothing turns up before 7.30am or runs after midnight. Potentially very useful stuff, particularly if you're now thinking "what seriously, they start that late on Sundays?" To be fair this is the current timetable poster at Bank station installed in 2021, they haven't yet replaced it with a less detailed version. But that's the direction of travel.
They've also vanished on the Jubilee line.
What you get is how long it takes to travel to the other stations on the line and the fact trains run every 2-6 minutes. But that's now all you get, not the fact that trains run from 0518 to 0106. My hunch is that TfL no longer want to print a new poster every time they launch a new timetable, which isn't very often but in their view every scrimped penny counts. What's more if you launch the TfL Go app it doesn't tell you when the first and last trains are either, only what time the next trains are due and how to plan a journey.
One stupid thing is that the QR code directs you to tfl/gov.uk/timetables, a top-level index page, rather than one level down to the specific Jubilee line page tfl.gov.uk/tube/timetable/jubilee. It's a QR code guys, it can link anywhere, and you know anyone scanning it is on the Jubilee line platforms at West Ham because this is a West Ham/Jubilee-specific poster.
Even stupider the TfL website has a specific page listing first and last trains. I didn't know it existed until I started writing today's post but there it is at tfl.gov.uk/modes/tube/first-and-last-tube. It's excellent, it has actual pdf timetables for every tube line showing the first few and last few trains, and what's more it was updated as recently as 13th January. A QR code which linked directly to that would be a lot more useful than a QR code linking to an index of umpteen different lines, and beneath that atomised hourly departures.
Worse, I understand TfL have also introduced these threadbare timetable posters at farflung stations with a limited service. They used to provide posters with times of actual departures at the far end of the Metropolitan line, for example.
But as of a fortnight ago, according to a user on Reddit, even Chorleywood has been switched over to the new style QR-code-only design. That is a proper abdication of responsibility, even down to the wording that says "For Chiltern Railways times, visit chilternrailways.co.uk". See photo here.
n.b. I haven't been out to Chorleywood to check, or to any similar stations, so if you're passing through any of the following today please leave a comment and let us know.
Still has actual timetable poster
Switched to timetable-less poster
Not sure
Amersham
Amersham, Chalfont & Latimer, Chorleywood
Chesham, Rickmansworth, Watford, Croxley Roding Valley, Chigwell, Grange Hill
It's worth saying that TfL still produce timetable summaries for the Amersham and Watford branches of the Metropolitan line with every departure clearly listed. These days they're only available as pdfs online, the printed versions having ceased in 2016 to save money, but they explicitly show all the details the new posters lack. Heaven knows why TfL can't print a poster of the Croxley-related info and post it up at Croxley station, it's hardly rocket science, indeed I'd suggest it's a false economy.
Interestingly Overground platforms all still have full timetables showing every departure, now shaded using the colour of the line. I suspect this is because National Rail stations follow different rules so TfL can't ditch them. But it is a tad odd that even part-time Windrush station Battersea Park has a bespoke timetable poster to show its occasional services, whereas posters at Oxford Circus won't even tell you when the last train goes.
TfL's We Can't Be Arsed To Print That Any More department is increasingly in the driving seat these days, claiming all the information passengers need is available on the TfL Go app or online. But it's often not easily found, or only discoverable by trying to plan a journey, or sometimes no longer available even there. There's also an assumption that everyone has a smartphone, which obviously they don't, and that the TfL Go is a brilliant travel companion, which alas it isn't yet.
And even when there is a QR code to supposedly help you out it invariably links to a ridiculously generic top level page rather than what you might actually want to know, leaving you either faffing on the platform or more likely in the dark. So watch out for these new depleted timetable posters at a station near you, maybe already, maybe not yet, but the We Can't Be Arsed To Print That Any More department has no intention of making things easier for you any time soon.
