Press release: 9.5 Million Pocket Timetables

[Hannover, 07. December 2005]

The bestseller in Switzerland will this year again be the handy Pocket Timetables: the SBB will once more provide their customers with a total of 9.5 million city and regional timetables free of charge. The city timetables appear in a total of 97 versions, followed by 21 different regional timetables plus 12 international timetables. The pocket timetables were revised after experience gained in last year's efforts and have been also been improved in response to a customer survey.

As in 2004, the SBB also commissioned the service provider HaCon in 2005 with the complete production of the setting copies in PDF format. With the deployed tools of the HAFAS Print family of software, the editorial effort required by the SBB compared with previous years was reduced enormously. The city timetables were produced in a highly automated fashion similar to the DB city timetables. The regional timetables were developed in a format similar to a railway guide, with the help of the HAFAS Print table planner. The pocket timetable production was supplied with timetable data from a standard SBB database, from which not only the SBB railway guides, but also the SBB's electronic timetable media (e.g. CD-ROMS or online schedules) are fed.