Bus times by text become free, and some will be real time information

Traveline South West has announced that an arrangement has been negotiated to deliver scheduled data free of charge to mobile phones. The cost was previously 25p plus your normal network charge - it's not clear whether the network charge still applies.

All of First’s Bristol urban network of services are real-time enabled - based on the actual position of the bus - plus those operating from Bristol to Thornbury and Chipping Sodbury. As part of the Greater Bristol Bus Network programme, further services will be real-time enabled including the X27.

So what you do is follow the instructions on the bus stop and send a text including the code on the poster. If it's real information, it will give you an expected arrival time e.g. “4 minutes”. If it's just information from the timetable it will be shown as something like “11:20”.

The new arrangement is expected to run for 2 years initially.

(N.B. Please tell us if you try it, expecting real-time, but don't get it. The 342 doesn't seem to be real-time at the moment - let us know what services you have problems with)