Monday: Garissa, Mandera Convoy Delayed, Western Corridor Cancelled , Northeast Services Run Concurrent Requiring Coordination Figure 73.1 , Monday Route Status

A timetable organises scheduled events along a time axis and a categorical axis (routes, rooms, people, vehicles). The Data Visualisation Catalogue describes it as a reference and management tool , its primary function is lookup, not pattern discovery. This visual form is a specific interpretation: a Gantt-style timetable where bars encode duration as width rather than simply listing departure and arrival times in text cells.

A text timetable (the form used for train schedules in printed books) is superior when users need to look up a specific departure time. Scan to the route row, scan to the time column, read the cell. The lookup is O(1) with a trained eye. A visual timetable is superior when users need to see patterns across routes : which routes overlap in ways that create vehicle conflicts; where the morning window is underused; how long each route takes relative to its neighbours.

Google Docs, Excel, and Apple Numbers render timetables as fixed-cell grids. A 1-hour convoy and a 6-hour convoy both occupy one cell. D3's continuous time scale maps duration to pixels precisely , the Northwest Lodwar convoy (12 hours, 06:00, 18:00) takes up 85 percent of the row width, and this is immediately legible as a full-day commitment without reading any numbers. Status encoding (opacity for completed, amber border for delayed, dashed border for cancelled) layers operational intelligence onto the schedule without adding columns. Hover tooltips surface detailed notes.

Unlike bar charts, timetable bars should not start at zero , they start at the departure time. The axis baseline is the opening of the operational window (06:00 here), not zero. This is the correct approach: a bar starting at 06:00 means the convoy leaves at 06:00; starting at 00:00 would mean the entire time between midnight and departure is visually wasted space. The left edge of each bar is its scheduled departure; the right edge is its estimated arrival. Length = duration.

framework , FT Visual Vocabulary The FT Visual Vocabulary places timetables and Gantt charts in its Change Over Time category as a reference subtype. Its guidance on the table vs. visual distinction: use a text table when precise value lookup is the primary task; use a visual form when relative duration, overlap, or pattern across multiple entities is the analytical goal.

Paste this into Claude Code to generate a working version of this chart, plus its data file. The result will not be a perfect replica , the goal is that the reader can run the prompt, get a chart of this type, and read its source. Generate a complete, self-contained timetable in D3 v7. Two files:

The ideas in this chapter didn't appear from nowhere. George Bradshaw published the first national railway timetable in 1839 , Bradshaw's Railway Guide , and the format he developed (origins times destinations times times in a tabular matrix) became the universal timetable layout for trains, buses, and ferries worldwide. George Bradshaw, circa 1850. AI-generated portrait based on a public domain engraving (Wikimedia Commons).

The ideas in this chapter didn't appear from nowhere. George Bradshaw published the first national railway timetable in 1839 , Bradshaw's Railway Guide , and the format he developed (origins times destinations times times in a tabular matrix) became the universal timetable layout for trains, buses, and ferries worldwide. George Bradshaw, circa 1850. AI-generated portrait based on a public domain engraving (Wikimedia Commons).