Transport for London (TfL) is testing the first part of a £120m communications project to improve London bus services.

The organisation last week began an eight-week trial of a real-time system installed on five buses on the 149 route, which runs between London Bridge and Edmonton Green.

The system, being developed by Siemens, will initially focus on improving services for sight- and hearing-impaired passengers by using voice announcements and visual displays to provide information about the next stop.

The trial is part of TfL’s iBus project, a programme that will use satellite tracking and GPRS data to pinpoint 8,000 buses across London and communicate information to drivers, passengers, garages and a central communications centre.

‘People in the control centre will be able to look at an A-Z of London on a computer screen and see where all the buses are on the road,’ said a spokeswoman.

‘As well as using existing radio systems they will be able to send information to drivers to stop buses bunching, or details of what route to take if there’s a last minute diversion.’

iBus will eventually be used on all 700 London bus routes, and TfL will start installing it on buses in garages next year.

The satellite technology will replace the tag and beacon system which records the location of the bus when it passes roadside beacons along the route.

This data can be inaccurate if the bus is held up between stops. The satellite tracking system will instead beam the bus’s location to a central computer system every 30 seconds.

TfL hopes the system will be used to send SMS text messaging updates of a bus’s location to passengers’ mobile phones.