Ask iris

Sorry know I have not been blogging for ages. :) So today wanted to share something. If you all have been taking bus like me. Then iris is someone that you MUST know if you have not known yet. iris is the acronym for Intelligent Route Information System by SBS Transit. There is actually 2 main services provided by iris, the iris Journey Planner and the iris NextBus.

iris Journey Planner helps you plan the best way to get to your destination by providing travel solutions on our bus, LRT and/or NEL, based on the cheapest fare, shortest walking distance or shortest travelling time. But I find it might not always give you a good answer. Sometimes the route it plan seem to take me all over Singapore. :p But then maybe the location I am looking at is too ulu. :p

iris NextBus is our latest iris service and it offers bus arrival time estimation on a real time basis. You now have the convenience of knowing how many minutes away your bus is from your bus stop or how long more before the next bus departs from the bus interchange. iris NextBus is available on our website and via GPRS and sms on mobile devices. This service is a service that I use almost everytime when I am going home. :) So that I do not have to waste too much time waiting at the bus stop as sometimes my bus service can take very long to come. :p But do give yourself about 10 - 8 mins buffer to get to the bus stop. Because depending on the traffic condition, sometimes the waiting time might get shortened or lengthened. The only disappointing thing I have is that the sms is only available for SingTel customers. So I can't use the sms service. :(

Internet
http://www.sbstransit.com.sg/iris3/nextbus.aspx

SMS
The service is chargeable at $0.05 by SingTel and available exclusively to SingTel mobile subscribers only. There will also be one SMS deduction for post-paid customers while prepaid or stored-value card customers, with no FREE SMS bundle will need to pay an additional $0.05 or $0.10 altogether per iris NextBus query.
For more details, you can refer to http://www.sbstransit.com.sg/iris/mobile_devices-sms.aspx.

GPRS
To access iris on your mobile devices please key in www.sbstransit.com.sg/mobileiris for mobile phones or http://www.sbstransit.com.sg/iris3/pdanextbus.aspx for PDAs.

Hope that you all would find iris as useful as I do. ^_^