Winnipeggers can look forward to fewer long, frigid waits at city bus stops next winter when a new transit phone-for-information service comes into operation.

Funding for the system, which will allow a bus rider to call a coded number and automatically receive the times of the next two bus arrivals at his stop, was completed yesterday.

Urban Affairs Minister Eugene Kostyra announced the province has agreed to contribute $620,625 toward the cost of introducing the telephone information service along with another new service that will involve posting bus schedules and other transit information at several hundred downtown bus stops.

The two projects will cost about $1.3 million.

"That's the financial approval we needed to get going," city transit director Rick Borland said, adding it will be sometime next winter before the city can begin offering the services.

Kostyra said a similar telephone information project has been highly successful in several Eastern Canadian cities, and Winnipeg transit officials are projecting it will bring in an additional $950,000 a year in bus fare revenues.

He said if the service proves as successful as anticipated, the system should more than pay for itself within a year or two.

Borland said the service, which will be operated through a computer, will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Initially it will not be sophisticated enough to provide up-to-the-minute information.

"If a particular bus breaks down on its route, the system won't know that," Borland said.

However, more generalized information, such as the fact most buses are running behind schedule to icy road conditions, can be fed into the system.

The automatic telephone information service will take in most bus stops in the city, although the downtown area may be excluded, the transit director said.

The provincial funding is being allocated under the recently created Urban Transit Capital Grants program, which is intended to encourage innovation in urban transit and better quality transit service.