The week started out with a short lived bus strike - and, tonight, as we head into labour day weekend, things have cooled down - but there's bad news for commuters looming at the end of it.
The new bus fares go into effect on Monday, and it won't be just the BBA members; the NBC will also have to follow suit.
This afternoon we spoke via phone with Minister of Transport, Dr. Louis Zabaneh who outlined the final agreement:
Dr. Louis Zabaneh, Minister of Transport
"So yesterday we signed the Ministry and the BBA an agreement on the points that we had discussed and deliberated upon. We had Mr. Ian Courtney from the Prime Minister's office as a witness. And two main things that we agreed upon was that there would be a $3 per gallon subsidy for a period of three months to highway bus operators, to village operators and also to city bus operators. The three days in which we had discussions, we looked at all the road service permits of the operators to determine their mileage, how much that would translate to in terms of gallons of diesel. And then based on that, the price of diesel, in terms of the subsidy for the diesel and how much they would be getting per month each. We also looked at a lot of the work that had already been done with the route between municipalities, the villages along the way and applied the $0.50 for short stops and the $1 for long stops. And everybody agreed. With the city, we still have a pending signing to do on Monday morning. However, the details of that have already been worked out and the funding will be through the city council in that case for city runs."