Bus Tracking System

Where I come from, commuters have the option of buying monthly bus passes, which give them free access to all the buses in the city for the entire month. For those of us who are disorganized/can't remember when rarely-used buses come, however, this can be less of a convenience than it might seem.

Seeing as the prices for these monthly passes are already abominably high, I see future bus companies being able to afford handing out funky little GPS-type gizmos that show the entire city on a tiny grid. (Alternitively, these could be sold. Downer.) All the buses would be tracked on this system at all times (appearing as tiny dots on the screen*), so that you wouldn't have to rely on the bus schedule to figure out when your bus was coming. As well, on particularly snowy days, you wouldn't be caught waiting for half an hour at your stop while your bus lumbers pathetically through the mush ten miles away: you could sit at home drinking coffee until (aha!) you notice that your bus is close enough to home - and then it's time to head out, with no panic, no hurry.

Perhaps as a cheaper alternative, this could be available on the Internet - though those of us without laptops would only be able to make use of this service at home or (perhaps, depending on the job) work.

This would also be really useful in terms of investigating a new bus route. If maps of the buses' routes were also available through these things, trip planning would be a breeze.

*Just realized this sounds like something out of Harry Potter. Nyeh... *