Dublin Bus celebrates 1m texts

Dublin Bus has rewarded its millionth BUSTXT user, 16-year-old Russell Lee, with a cheque for €1,000.

BUSTXT is an SMS service, launched in July of last year, allowing customers to text a number and receive a message with the times for the next three buses on the requested route in each direction.

Dublin Bus says that there is an average of 100,000 users each month for the service.

Statistics show that the most calls to the service are made on Saturdays and Sundays - about 33% of the week's hits.

There is a fairly even spread of what bus route information is looked for, with some routes where the services aren't of a very high frequency receiving slightly more calls.

The reasoning for this being that on high-frequency routes on quality bus corridors buses arrive every two to five minutes, meaning there is less of a need to know when the next bus is due.

To use the service, text BUS followed by the bus route number, eg BUS 10 to 53503.