FAQs about Personal Timetable

1. When is it better to use 'Personal Timetable' rather than the Travel Service?

The Personal Timetable is intended for passengers who travel regularly from A to B, in other words repeat journeys on the same route, or for commuters. Enter details such as starting point and destination, weekday and time slot for departure/arrival, send these parameters online to our computer centre and, after a slight delay, you will receive detailed timetables for the route of your choice: your own Personal Timetable. However, if you want to check a complete route for an individual journey, to book ticket(s) and/or a seat reservation online, the Travel Service is the better option. The Travel Service also offers a comparison of transport costs which gives you an estimate of the journey time and costs, as well as further links which enable you to make hotel reservations in advance, rent a car or even book tickets for an event at your destination.


2. Can I obtain a Personal Timetable for a journey from the corner bus stop, for example, to my workplace?

No problem. The 'Personal Timetable' knows all the Deutsche Bahn stations, many bus/tram stops operated by other transport companies as well as many railway stations throughout Europe. It covers a total of around 50,000 stations throughout Europe and more than 180,000 public transport stops in Germany.

This means you can obtain a Personal Timetable from any public transport stop to any other, no matter whether you need an up-to-date timetable to travel to work or school, are planning a business trip, or want to go on a shopping or theatre trip to a major city, visit relatives or even spend a holiday somewhere in Germany.

3. What information does the Personal Timetable provide?

It provides all arrival and departure times for the departure, change and destination stations along the required route, including the return journey on request, in the time slots that are of interest to you. After the computer has compiled your Personal Timetable on the basis of the parameters you specify, you can either have it sent to you by e-mail or download it from the Internet. It is available either as a PDF file, which you can view with Acrobat Reader* software and print out so that you can take it on the journey with you, or you can order your Personal Timetable in PDB format for Palm*.

You can download the additional viewer required for Palm/OS directly from the Personal Timetable start page. Acrobat Reader software can also be downloaded from numerous other pages of www.bahn.de. You will also find a download option, for instance, when you collect your Personal Timetable from the Internet.

4. What parameters can I enter for my Personal Timetable

To begin with, enter a starting point and destination. These can either be stations or other public transport stops. Unlike the Travel Service, this system cannot yet handle addresses or points of interest, platform numbers or fares. When entering the dates, it is advisable to choose a short time (one to two months) rather than a whole timetable period. This reduces the size of your Personal Timetable file and makes it available faster. You can now select the weekday(s) you require. For example, commuters do not normally need to tick the box for Sat and Sun. However, your Personal Timetable also shows any public holidays which fall on a weekday.

It is rare for passengers to need a timetable for the whole day from zero to midnight. You can determine 'time slots', e.g. between 7:00 and 9:00 for the outward journey and between 17:00 and 20:00 for the return journey. On the one hand, this gives you full flexibility as to when you travel within the given time slot, but simultaneously ensures that you get a clear timetable which does not contain lots of unnecessary information. You can then choose between e-mail delivery or download from the Internet, between PDF format for PC, Mac etc. or PDB format for Palm.

NB: You can also stipulate the maximum number of changes within the journey. And finally, you can also restrict the means of transport you are willing to use.

Normally, you can ignore the last item. Simply leave the default setting at 'Our Recommendation: selected connections' and your Personal Timetable will suggest a selection of the most convenient connections (in the same way as the Travel Service). You should change that setting only if you really want to include all possible connections, including inconvenient, time-consuming routes.

4. How do I obtain more than one Personal Timetable?

You cannot do so in one process. If either the starting point or destination differs, and of course if both differ, you have to start again from the beginning and have a new Personal Timetable compiled for the new route. However, you can request as many Personal Timetables as you need.

5. Which is quicker - delivery by e-mail or downloading from the Internet

Although it is more convenient to have your Personal Timetable sent to your e-mail address, that may take longer. On its way to you, an e-mail has to go through several mail servers - usually from different providers - which makes it impossible to say exactly how long it will take for the e-mail to reach you. If you need your Personal Timetable urgently, it is therefore better if you specify from the start that you wish to download it yourself. To do so, however, you must not leave the website after you have clicked the 'Create' button and sent off your data. You have to stay online and will soon receive a URL, which you simply click to proceed to the download.

6. I have only received an e-mail but not my Personal Timetable. What went wrong?

Many companies protect their PC workplaces against harmful external factors coming from the Internet. The filter used by the system administrator at your company (firewall function) may perhaps also prevent the delivery of attachments in PDF or PDB format to your workplace. The only thing you can do in this case is inform your system administrator that you wish to receive your Personal Timetable in future. Or you give us a private e-mail address outside the company network.

7. Why am I unable to download my Personal Timetable from the Internet?

You have done everything correctly and your Personal Timetable is ready for you to download. You have clicked the link to your Personal Timetable on the download page with the right-hand mouse key - but after a few seconds, you get an error message.

As described under Section 7, this may be because your PC workstation does not entitle you to download any or certain files from the Internet, as protection against viruses. This has also been set up by your company's system administrator. Once again, the only thing you can do is contact your system administrator. Or repeat your request for a Personal Timetable from a different computer which is not connected to the company network.

9. Why was my Personal Timetable not delivered to my e-mail address?

In extremely rare cases, an e-mail sometimes gets lost on its way around the Internet. However, that is really extremely rare.
A more likely reason is that you have entered an incorrect or incomplete e-mail address. As we all know, a typing error is easily made. Roughly 2 per cent (!) of all the Personal Timetables our system tries to deliver by e-mail are returned because the address was not given correctly.After your have entered all the particulars and clicked the 'Create' button, we consequently ask you to check your e-mail address once again.

10. Where can I find further Help & Hints about my Personal Timetable?

The above list contains only the most common questions and answers about a Personal Timetable. If you have any further questions, click "Help & Hints" at the top right to receive more detailed information.