A new system is to be put in place to end the issue of so-called 'ghost buses' which simply never show up.
The National Transport Authority (NTA) has awarded a contract to a vendor for the replacement of the system.
The national Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) system, awarded to Trapeze ITS UK Ltd, will be put in place for all public service buses in Ireland.
Lynn Barker from the Lusk Action Group told Lunchtime Live she welcomes the change but it is still a while away.
"It's still another year away, unfortunately more than a year," she said.
"We were told this time last year, November last year, that it would be two years. So I think we're about a year away from it.
"Will it fix it? I think it will go some of the way towards fixing some of the issues [but] certainly not all of the way."
Ms Barker said another change will see complaints across all operators moved to one place.
"One of the things that will work, I think, is that there the NTA are now consolidating their customer complaints," she said.
"They're calling this Capita - we were told that Bus Éireann are being rolled out this month on this Capita [system] and the others will be rolled out within three to four months after that.
"That will go a long way to helping matters because as it is, there are so many different services that people don't generally know where to complain and they complain to the wrong person."
Ms Barker said all the complaints will go into a central system and amendments to bus services can be made based on those complaints.
'Backend systems'
App developer Stephen McBride told the show he hopes the new AVL system will mean big changes.
"The main issue is probably the ghost buses that people talk about - these are when buses just drop off the apps," he said.
"That's just down to the backend systems not being as good as they could be, I believe.
"This tender should hopefully go some way to addressing that - so people will see that if a bus is cancelled it will be reliably showing in the app as cancelled.
"That's something to hopefully look forward to in this update."
'A complex thing to do'
Mr McBride said changes such as these can take time.
"These things unfortunately move fairly slow," he said.
"Things like even being able to pay on with your phone on the bus - that's been in development for a number of years at this stage.
"It's a complex thing to do, though, there's an awful lot of moving parts in the background to make it all happen.
"It's never as simple as you think unfortunately.
"I'm a software developer by trade and when someone comes to you with a proposal they think it's simple [but] it's often not the case when you actually dig into it".
The NTA has said the rollout of the new AVL tracking system is going to commence late next year and completed in late 2026.
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