The Guardian reports that Portsmouth is taking its public transportation to the next level with a sophisticated and public wireless network (Rush Hour Revolution)

What Portsmouth desperately needed was to get more people out of cars and on to public transport. But the city's congested streets played havoc with bus timetables, and unreliable scheduling deterred people from taking the bus. To encourage more people to ditch their cars, the city invested in a wireless mesh network: a web of wireless antennae, situated at bus stops, which supply the city streets with a huge amount of air-bound internet bandwidth.

In practical terms, this means that passengers at any of the city's 37 real-time passenger information bus shelters are told exactly how long they will have to wait. This is not an estimate based on timetables, but accurate up-to-the-minute information beamed directly from the bus. Because bus operators have access to the exact location of their fleet, they can set schedules accordingly.

The city's 308 buses have been equipped with their own "ruggedised" PC, running a version of Windows. Each bus is able to monitor its precise position with a GPS (global positioning system) connection and upload information about its accurate arrival time using a mesh mobile radio data modem.

via Smart Mobs