Welling­ton pub­lic trans­port has made anoth­er great leap for­ward. From the mar­gin of a local com­mu­ni­ty news­pa­per:

Bus users across Welling­ton can use their cell­phones to find out when the next sched­uled ser­vice will arrive. The ser­vice allows prospec­tive pas­sen­gers to find the times of the next three bus­es due by txting a four-dig­it num­ber — the bus-stop ID num­ber, dis­played on bus-stop signs — to BUS (287). A reply will arrive with­in sec­onds.

Now note that this will not tell you when the next bus will actu­al­ly arrive, but (pre­sum­ably) give you the next three bus­es due as per the timetable. So not huge­ly help­ful when your bus has not shown up for no appar­ent rea­son, and nor is it as cool as the dig­i­tal signs I’ve seen in Auck­land’s inner sub­urbs, but still a start. Now can they just sort out inte­grat­ed tick­et­ing? Kthxbai.