MTA Announces Expansion Of Real-Time Bus Tracking Service
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - The days of standing at a bus stop wondering when the next bus is going to show up may be coming to an end.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority announced Wednesday the expansion of its real-time, online bus tracking service, "Bus Time."
Bus Time has been rolled out borough-wide in Staten Island and the Bronx. The program allows commuters to track every bus on every route in real time on the Internet, smart phones - even by text messages to cell phones.
"Bus Time has proven extremely popular among bus riders on Staten Island and the Bronx," said acting MTA Chairman Fernando Ferrer. "They find it useful and easy to access, and I think that's a tremendous endorsement of what we have been doing. Bus Time is so helpful to our customers that we have scheduled an extremely aggressive timetable to introduce to three other boroughs."
All bus routes in Manhattan are now set to receive Bus Time this year, the MTA said. Brooklyn will follow, then Queens, with all routes expected to be complete by April 2014.
To use Bus Time where it currently operates, you can send a text message to 511123, or click here. The video below also explains how it works.
Some 5,700 MTA buses run on 300 routes and serve 2.6 million customers a day, the MTA said.
