Anyone who has travelled buy bus in Birmingham in the last few years may have noticed that some bus stops have had electronic notice boards fitted in them. For the past three years or so these have had nothing more on them than a message that soon these will be showing the time the next bus shall arrive.

Birmingham and Travel West Midlands recently announced that they will be putting these boards to their intended purpose on the number 11 route. The 11 route is the outer circle and , at 27 miles, is the longest urban bus route in Europe. It is very prone to bunching up such that one can wait for a very long time and have as many as a dozen buses (rather than the proverbial three) appear together.

The buses will be fitted with GPS style satelite tracking system that will not only feed information to 200 the display boards around the route to inform passengers of the expected arrival time of the next bus but will also allow for buses to be held or rerouted to minimise bunching.

Eventually this system will be rolled out onto other routes.