On Trains & Buses

A spot of progress for a change

Posted on August 25, 2009

Reading time: 2 minutes.

With the ever pervasiveness of GPS, bus tracking was bound to come to mind sooner or later. It’s been in Wales for a while already and Cheshire East Council now have rolled it out on an experimental basis. So far, it just seems to have the 27 Macclesfield-Knutsford and the 130 Macclesfield-Manchester included. For me, that’s not useless because I use both of these on a  regular basis anyway and it would be invaluable to be able to see what’s happening out there on the roads after the schools reopen and in the darker and colder evenings. After all, it is so easy for buses to get delayed.

Unlike Wales, where I have seen the information displayed at bus stops, it’s all online for now. Still, that can mean that you stay inside until you that a bus is due in a few minutes and make the requisite dash to the bus stop in plenty of time. Any time not spent out in the cold and the wet in blind faith and/or frustration can only be a good thing. This is precisely the sort of thing that is needed if a coating of snow or a storm causes havoc.

All in all, it’s a good news story and public transport needs more of them. Let’s hope that it stays with us and even gets expanded to full coverage. A good story could get even better.