For generations, there has been a time-honored ritual practiced by railroad passengers everywhere. If you wanted to know when a train would arrive at your station (or any other station, for that matter), you consulted the public timetable issued by the railroad. It’s true that there once were many more trains running in the United States and Canada than there are today, but Amtrak and VIA Rail are still running trains in their respective countries, including on several corridors that feature several daily frequencies. There are also the “transit railroads” that serve major cities with frequent (and, in some cases, not so frequent) service. Still, the timetables were a reliable and easy way to find out when a train was due, whether you wanted to get on and ride, or meet somebody who was getting off.
Printed public timetables are being relegated to the dustbin of history at this time, whether riders like it or not. The latest casualty is the set of color-coded timetables issued by New Jersey Transit (NJT) for its various rail lines, all except one of which originate or terminate at Penn Station, New York or the historic Hoboken Terminal (or, in the case of two lines, both). The other runs between Atlantic City and 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. There were eight such schedules in a full set.
Alan S. Drake, a transit and environmental advocate from New Orleans who was visiting New Jersey, found visual evidence of the demise of NJT’s timetables at Newark Penn Station on Sunday, April 5. There were still bus schedules to be found on the upper rows (as well as more in another rack nearby, but the lower two rows contained cards that described the loss of rail schedules in the slots where the schedules for the different lines had been available to riders until recently.
A century ago, T.S. Eliot predicted that civilization would end “not with a bang, but with a whimper.” While I don’t know yet if his prediction will come to pass on a macro scale, that happened to the colorful and informative timetables from NJT earlier this year. When the agency announced a four-week temporary schedule for the cutover for one track from the old Portal Bridge to the new Portal North Bridge on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor (NEC) on Jan. 15, there was plenty of advice for riders to check for train schedules online, but there was no mention of public timetables. Regular operation returned on March 15, but the printed schedules did not. According to NJT, they have been “suspended” for the rest of the year.
In response to my inquiry, the agency told me in an e-mail message: “The printed rail timetables have been suspended for the remainder of 2026 due to the significant increase in rail schedule changes that are being enacted this year with two Portal cutovers, FIFA schedules, regular service changes etc.” FIFA is the upcoming World Cup soccer tournament that will result in special schedules on game days, and the “Portal cutover” for the inbound track is expected to occur this fall. Nonetheless, the schedules currently in effect are the same as the ones that ran before the Portal cutover for the outbound track began on Feb. 15. There was no public announcement that printed schedules would be discontinued, or even “suspended” for at least the rest of this year.
It seems unlikely that the “suspension” will be temporary. NJT went on to say: “In addition to being extremely cost-prohibitive to execute full-scale printing productions of new schedules for every rail line seven or more times this year (approximately $500,000), there are environmental benefits as well—preventing the discarding of thousands of printed rail schedules that are obsolete within weeks of their production. This also prevents the potential for older timetables being circulated after they’ve expired, which could lead to customer confusion and inaccurate information in the hands of customers who didn’t have the correct printed schedule.” These are not the arguments that are typically advanced to support a temporary suspension. Instead, they seem to argue for an upcoming permanent elimination.
In addition, NJT said: “Customers are increasingly relying less on the printed versions of our rail schedules, and more on the digital versions of the schedules available on the NJ Transit website and mobile app. Customers can request a printed version of their rail schedule at any one of our customer service field offices.” Again, that sounds more like an argument for permanent discontinuance than for a temporary suspension. Still, the availability of information on the agency’s website does not appear to substitute fully for the schedules I used to carry and consulted when I wanted to know when a train was due.
Some advocates for the riders objected. The Lackawanna Coalition made a statement at a March 31 NJT Board meeting: “We’ve heard your explanation for dropping new timetables for the rest of the year, and are worried. The replacements on the website are incomplete, giving the schedule only. There is no fare information, no instructions for new riders, no nondiscrimination policy statement. A riders’ guide would help, especially with FIFA on the horizon, but we are concerned about sudden changes, those without smartphones, people planning when phone assistance is not available, etc. Currently, information is difficult to find on the website, as it is scattered among many pages, and results depend on one’s skills in searching. That is inappropriate and is an accessibility disaster. All this information should be easy to find, ideally in one location.” By the time the Coalition had made that statement, the schedules were already gone, so the statement only become part of a forgotten record.
While the NJT website has a “trip planning” function and will list trains scheduled to leave a selected station, those functions do not generate a schedule. For an online schedule, it is necessary to scroll to the bottom of the home page, hit “Services” and then “Trains” to reach a page that has “Printer-Friendly Schedules” as an option. That yields a list of rail lines, from which it is possible to choose a line and “weekday” or “weekend” schedule for that line. People who don’t know which line they want to use are essentially out of luck.
MTA Following Suit
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road eliminated printed schedules during the COVID-19 pandemic. The information is available on the MTA website, but it is not easy to print for a hard copy. So far, other transit railroads outside the local region have not adopted the practice. MBTA Commuter Rail in Boston, SEPTA Regional Rail in Philadelphia, MARC in Maryland and Metra in Chicago still have station racks filled with printed schedules.
There are no more printed schedules for intercity trains, either. It has been slightly more than ten years since Amtrak issued a schedule book (the final issue was dated Jan. 11, 2016). VIA Rail in Canada discontinued printed schedule books before Amtrak did, and its schedules are not easy to find on the VIA Rail website. As for Amtrak, it’s necessary to start the process of making a reservation to get the train schedule, and expected arrival times at stations can only be found on the website tracking map. In short, it’s much more difficult to get schedules today than it was when there were printed schedules available.
Thrown Under the Proverbial Bus?
Philip L. Streby, a 50-year railroader whose career included 33 years at Amtrak, and who is now an advocate with the Rail Users’ Network (RUN) and the Indiana Passenger Rail Alliance (IPRA), called the former Amtrak schedule booklet “a wish book” that could prompt potential riders to think about taking trips to the hundreds of destinations that “America’s Railroad” serves, including many popular tourist destinations. Streby told me: “They seem to forget that a timetable is more than just a schedule. It’s a trip planning tool. At Amtrak, there are so few trains, and many people have never been on a train. I think there are two reasons: First, the trains essentially went away prior to 1971, when Amtrak was created. In fact, there is only one train a day per long-distance route. There are three generations of people who have never been on a train, have never thought about a train, and will never consider a train because they’re unfamiliar with trains. The timetable was one of the best marketing tools Amtrak ever had, and they got rid of it. You could open the National Timetable and see where in the country Amtrak went, and you can’t really do that on a cell phone. The two are disconnected. Today’s kids are totally unfamiliar with geography, including in the U.S. Consequently, how would they even know where the trains go, because they don’t even know where the cities are? Search engines are not geared for railroads. Even Google and similar sites give directions only by road and not by rail.”
While Streby’s remarks reflect his prior career at Amtrak and his orientation as an advocate today, the same questions he raised about the demise of printed timetables could also apply to transit railroads operated by local agencies such as NJT. New Yorkers and tourists from elsewhere don’t necessarily know about all the places they can go and things they can do in New Jersey, in the cities, in the small towns on the lines, and at places like the Jersey Shore. Even if they know about those attractions, they don’t know how to get to them, unless NJT has an effective way to tell them where they can go and how they can get there. That’s what timetables did, and they’re gone, at least for this year, and maybe for all time.
Looking Ahead
Is it reasonable to expect prospective riders to find out where trains go and when without an easy and tangible reminder of the schedules? It appears not. Motorists have mapping software to help them find their destinations, but there is nothing comparable on any sort of transit, rail or bus. It is difficult to see how motorists can be convinced to take discretionary trips by train when the agency that operates those trains makes it difficult to find out where they go and their schedules. People who depend on transit might know more about their local agency’s services from using them, but that knowledge does not help those riders when they visit other places, and it does not necessarily warn them about upcoming service changes.
Ironically, NJT itself discriminates between transit modes when making information available to riders. The agency’s statement ended: “Bus and light rail timetables will continue to be printed as usual.” I don’t know why NJT continues to display bus schedules and make them available while not doing the same with rail schedules. The agency cited the cost of printing rail schedules (claiming $500,000) for printing only eight issues. There are also three issued light rail schedules. NJT also offers 275 bus schedules similarly available on its website, including some “combined” schedules listing multiple routes, and some routes with limited service. So, the cost argument does not appear to be particularly persuasive.
All in all, it appears counterproductive to discontinue printed schedules, because they provide useful information to riders, both regular and potentially new, which include visitors from out of town and motorists who might be persuaded to take the train, if they only knew when and where they could catch it. The additional revenue from new riders could help pay for printing the schedules.
In these hard times, when transit needs all the riders it can get and all the goodwill it can muster with elected officials and other decision-makers, reducing its profile does not seem to be an effective means for gaining positive expose or a positive revenue flow, especially when new potential riders do not have a good way of learning when and where to catch the train. It will help if NJT brings schedules back next year, but the likelihood still exists that printed NJT schedules will be “suspended” forever.
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