Sydney, Oct 24 : After a year of trials, GPS-equipped buses will be on NSW roads early next year, the State Government has said.
Transport Minister John Watkins today announced a preferred tenderer had been selected to install the Public Transport Information and Priority System on a fleet of 1800 buses.
The onboard computer devices will link the buses by satellite to the Roads and Traffic Authority's traffic light control system, which will in turn give late-running buses the green light, providing commuters with a faster trip.
The technology will be used on 43 "strategic corridors" in and around Sydney.
Sydney, Oct.24 : There have been plenty of light moments in the cricket life of Ricky Ponting, too, and one of them surrounded his first involvement with Shane Warne at the Australian Cricket Academy in Adelaide during the winter of 1992, of how the aspiring spin-king tried to lead him astray even though his then captain-to-be was a teenager at the time.
In his book, Ponting reveals that despite their age difference — Ponting was 17 and Warne almost 23 — "he headed in my direction and we shared some time together".
Writes Ponting in his Captain’s Dairy for 2007: "He was the bloke responsible for my nickname 'Punter', assigned to me because of my habit of sneaking down to the TAB on Monday and Thursday nights to have a bet on the greyhounds.
Sydney, Oct.24 : In his new book, Captain's Diary 2007, which hits bookshelves across Australia today, Ponting reveals how his team's World Cup-winning celebrations almost ended in disaster — with the possibility of even a night in jail — in the West Indies earlier this year after the team ventured back onto the Bridgetown pitch to sing its celebratory song Under the Southern Cross following its win over Sri Lanka in the final.
According to stuff.nz.com, Ponting noticed a group of policemen coming up behind them, with one of them saying: "Righto boys, time to go, you've got to get off the ground."
Sydney, Oct.24 : Former Australian captain and middle-order bat Ian Chappell has questioned the merits of Ian Botham's recent knighthood, reigniting a war of words with the English cricket great.
Chappell, who says he hasn't spoken to Botham since 1980, unleashed a withering attack on Beefy in today's edition of The Bulletin magazine.
It follows claims from Botham in his new autobiography that he "flattened" the former Australian captain in a Melbourne bar 30 years ago.
Chappell again dismisses Botham's recounting of the events of their much-told 1977 spat, before cautioning the Englishman, who was knighted by the Queen this month for his services to cricket and charity, about "peddling his lies".
