Bus service to Dockyard - which has been suspended for the past eight weeks to the outrage of West End residents - will resume today, Government has announced.

In a joint press conference Friday to announce that a settlement with the bus drivers union had been reached, Minister of Works and Engineering Alex Scott was joined Transport Minister Dr. Ewart Brown, Sandys MPs Eugene Cox and Dennis Lister and Bermuda Industrial Union president Derrick Burgess.

Mr. Scott said regular bus service will begin this morning and both buses and private vehicles will now enter the Dockyard on Pender Road and depart on Freeport Drive. The agreement is a slight modification on a proposal put forward by Government some weeks ago, that all four wheeled traffic would use the above system, while cycles would be permitted to move in both directions on Pender Road.

Speaking for the union, Mr. Burgess said bus drivers had considered that plan unsafe for both their vehicles and the general public.

“Now all traffic is in one way and out the other way,” he noted. Mr. Scott said a number of works taking place at the moment will make the area safer for all vehicles. Freeport Drive is to be resurfaced with asphalt and security barriers will be erected between the road and the docks, he said. Signposts will also be erected to direct traffic.

Mr. Scott said he anticipated that implementing these measures would cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars. However, he added, the earlier plan to widen Pender Road would have been much more logistically complicated and cost the Government millions of dollars.