BREAKING NEWS
For Lower Mainland transit users!

TEXT MESSAGING access to Bus Schedules in the Lower Mainland

December 06, 2007 – from Translink’s website

When’s the Next Bus? Right now!

Printed bus schedules – and those available online – are handy to have, but have a main drawback: they only indicate the scheduled arrival and departure times from selected “timing points”. Unless you live beside a timing point, there’s a fair amount of guesswork involved in finding out when the next bus is due at your particular bus stop.

Now, TransLink introduces Next Bus: a new extension of the long-established system that provides bus schedule information by phone or Internet. Next Bus sends information specific to your bus stop right to your mobile phone. If you can send a text message, you can find out when the next six buses are due at that particular stop.

To use “Next Bus”:

1. begin by looking at the bus stop sign. You’ll see a five-digit number – that bus stop’s unique bus stop code identification number.
2. Next, activate your phone’s text messaging function.
3. In the “Send To” field, enter “33333” (the same as the last five digits in TransLink’s Customer Information hotline),
4. then, under “Message”, enter that five-digit bus stop code (make sure you’re in “Number” mode).
5. Within seconds, you’ll receive a list of the next six buses scheduled to arrive at that stop.

If you need information on a specific route and more than one route serves that bus stop, leave a space after the bus stop code and enter the route number you need. You’ll then get the next six scheduled arrivals for that route only.

Next Bus will keep getting better. TransLink is in the process of converting its communications technology so that conventional buses and most Community Shuttles will be equipped with a Global Positioning System (GPS) device. The GPS will track a bus’s precise location, and Next Bus will be able to provide information on the actual arrival times.

Next Bus is another way in which TransLink is meeting the needs of commuters, by providing information they need in more and more accessible ways. In October, TransLink became the first Canadian transit system to be added to Google Transit, and in November, TransLink introduced iMove www.i-move.ca, the one-stop web portal for comprehensive transportation conditions information.