Innovative, hi-tech plans to give bus passengers in York a 21st century information service to help get them around the city could move a step closer next week.

Members of the council's new Transport Advisory Panel are meeting next Monday (July 8) to discuss the state-of-the-art Bus Location and Information Sub System - or BLISS for short. And the scheme could get the green light if members of the panel backs the award of a contract for the first phase of the project next week.

The futuristic technology uses computers on buses to provide 'real time' information to bus stops and other displays and cut down delays by altering traffic signals.

The £500,000 system involves: equipping buses with an on-board computer, a satellite navigation device and communications device using the on-board equipment to communicate buses' positions on the road and how they are performing against their schedules to a central computer using the central computer to calculate predictions for bus arrival times at subsequent stops down the route and sending this information to customer roadside display signs, web sites and mobile telephone information services allowing late-running buses to alert traffic signals and secure longer green lights to get through junctions with the minimum of delay

Council transport planners are recommending the award of a contract to Advanced Communications and Information Systems Ltd (ACIS) who would begin preparatory work for the system later this year.

A trial of the new system on Rawcliffe Bar Park & Ride Service would then begin next summer (2003) with the Acomb-City Centre-Wigginton route operational by the end of 2003.

Earlier this year the council was awarded £500,000 by the Government to assist the funding of the project. Once in operation, the running costs of the BLISS system will be funded by the bus companies.

Councillor Tracey Simpson-Laing, the council's executive member for transport, said, "An improved bus service is vital to the council's plans to reduce traffic congestion in York. I hope that the residents of York will see that as a council we care about the future of transport in the city.

"The BLISS system will help to make buses more reliable and will provide passengers with much better information. We are at long last bringing bus travel in York into the 21st century. I hope the new BLISS system will lead the public to viewing travel by bus as their first choice of transport."

BLISS would be brought into operation as part of the council's far-reaching £50m, five-year local transport plan. It is part of a multi-million pound package of improvements backed by the council and bus companies to make bus travel more attractive to York residents.

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