BURY commuters will soon have no excuse for getting on and off at the wrong bus stop.

For Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority (GMPTA) is to go ahead with a £350,000 project to make it easier for passengers to get around.

Stops will be upgraded to display the stop name and direction of travel. The work will be undertaken over the next five years.

Over a number of years, many bus stops have come to be known by names derived from the nearest side road or a local landmark.

But currently the majority of bus stop plates only display bus service numbers although research shows that bus passengers are strongly in favour of displaying the stop names and the direction the bus is travelling in.

Already, almost 5,400 stops have been named and stored in a database which will eventually hold the names of every stop in the county. It is expected that this work will be completed within the next six months.

Chairman of GMPTA's policy committee, Councillor Andrew Fender, said: "The Authority is working hard to make sure that information about public transport is as helpful and readily available to passengers as possible. Naming bus stops may seem like a small undertaking, but it can help us achieve a number of things."

He added: "For a start, passengers tell us they find this extra information at the stop itself useful and obviously it is a major benefit to people who may be unfamiliar with an area.

"In addition, an exciting initiative is currently under way to introduce Real Time Information on many bus routes over the next few years, so the name of the next bus stop can be displayed on a screen on the bus itself."

Coun Fender continued: "It will also help passengers to plan their public transport journeys in advance. A journey planner can be accessed at GMPTE's website and this has recently been upgraded so that people can plan their journeys quite specifically from address to address, so the precise location and name of the right stop needs to be identified.

"Eventually, all this information will be used in a national database of bus stops to enable a national internet journey planning facility to be created."

The committee released £70,000 for work to continue in 2003/4 and a rolling programme will now be scheduled to complete the work over the next five years.