Dockyard cruise ship passengers hoping to visit Horseshoe Bay today have been warned to expect a transportation “disaster” of long queues and confusing schedules.

Bermuda Industrial Union president Chris Furbert issued the warning after a private mini bus shuttle system for cruise ship passengers in the West End was introduced last week.

Last Wednesday hundreds of visitors and residents were left stranded after the new system experienced teething problems. Tourism and Transport Minister Shawn Crockwell later downplayed complaints and said that Government and the West End Development Corporation (Wedco) were working to “resolve the identified gaps and potential issues with the new service”.

But yesterday Mr Furbert said a combination of public and private transport vehicles were needed to meet demand — and problems at Dockyard would continue if Wedco refused to lay on more vehicles.

In previous years public transport buses alone had been deployed to cover the beach shuttle service.

Mr Furbert acknowledged that that system had struggled to cope with demand — but insisted that mini buses carried even fewer passengers and should be used to compliment the former system rather than replace it completely.

He questioned why Wedco and Government had introduced the new system in the middle of a busy cruise ship season without consulting with public transport staff and the union.

And he stressed that the new scheme had been devised by Government in partnership with Wedco and that the BIU “had never been involved in the process”.

“They have seen fit to go ahead and eliminate the buses from providing the beach service without the involvement of the BIU. We haven’t even been at the table so naturally we’re concerned,” Mr Furbert said yesterday.

“If the buses were being used and they had a shortage [of capacity] why not put the buses there and then add the mini buses to it, which would be an enhancement?

“If you had six or eight buses last year, let’s keep those six or eight buses and add to that to improve on the system. Let’s look at it — a public transport bus can carry 60 or 70 people, a mini bus is going to carry 15 or 20 people so you’re going to need three mini buses to get to what one bus can carry and that’s going to cause some problems.

“You’re talking about dropping 5,000 or 6,000 visitors in one place and we have to be able to move those visitors in a timely manner. You are going to need a combination of public transportation and private transportation to get that job done and to say that you are going to pass it all on to the private to get the job done — it’s not going to happen. You’re probably going to have another disaster up there tomorrow,”

Mr Furbert described last week’s problems as “major hiccups” and “a joke”.

“We have had a number of cruise ship seasons up at Dockyard now and we’re supposed to make it better, not worse, for the visitor. In my opinion last week we made it worse for them,” he said.

“I don’ know what the Minister considers ‘excessive’ but any time you’ve got to wait for transport for two hours that’s excessive.”

Last night a Government spokesman said the shuttle service had not replaced public transport buses, but “enhanced current transportation options”.

And he added that the mini buses provided seating for around 1,000 passengers each day which was “more than adequate and a greater capacity than the buses. The shuttles are an additional transport option that is now the primary transport for passengers going directly to the Horseshoe Bay Beach. One system was not replaced by another”.

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