The Transport for London (TfL) website has begun the trial of a new feature that will primarily enable commuters in London to find out how long they will have to wait for a bus to arrive at any of the 19,000 stops in the city. 
The TfL’s online bus-countdown service for checking in on any particular location is fairly easy-to-use. The commuters simply need to key in to the five-digit code allotted to every bus stop in London. For quicker access to the information, the website also allows the commuters to save the stops from which they generally board a bus. 
Though the new real-time reporting feature is yet to be officially launched by TfL, a spokesman revealed that “TfL has commenced user testing of the new 'countdown' system which will provide real bus arrival information for all 19,000 bus stops across London via the web and SMS.” 
The feature was also recently spotted accidentally by a keen-eyed Twitter user. Describing it as an indication that “the future of real-time reporting has already arrived,” a blogger called Diamond Geezer said in a recent post that the feature is a very useful one --- a game-changer for public transport access in London. 
With some, not all, bus stops already having screens that clearly list the number of minutes a commuter will have to wait for a bus to arrive, TfL apparently has planned the full launch of the ‘live bus departures’ service in autumn.