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SOUTH BURLINGTON — Chittenden County Transportation Authority buses will be running this morning after all.

An agreement Thursday night averted a threatened walkout by CCTA drivers planned to begin just after midnight. The walkout was avoided when a tentative three-year contract was reached after more than 10 hours of talks with a federal mediator.

“We have come to an agreement, and the strike has been called off. It’s good news. It’s good news for everybody,” said Duane Messier, president and business agent for Local 597 of the Teamsters, which represents the drivers. “We are coming away with smiles on our face. Both parties are very happy.”

Thursday night, bus passenger Stacey Castonguay, 37, of Colchester expressed relief she’d have a ride today. She relies on CCTA buses to get around.

“I like to come into town,” she said at the Cherry Street terminal in Burlington. “That’s my way of transportation, to go see my friends.”

The settlement, first reported on the Burlington Free Press’ website, was announced shortly after 8 p.m. by Messier; Burlington lawyer Joe McNeil, who represented CCTA management; and Elayne L. Tempel, the federal mediator from Portland, Maine.

“It’s been a long, very difficult but very productive day in the end,” McNeil said as the trio met with reporters at the Best Western Windjammer Conference Center on Williston Road.

Messier and McNeil said it would take another two weeks before the contract could be ratified by both sides.

“We do of course have to make sure this is written up, and it’s never over until it is absolutely over,” McNeil said. “But we are pretty confident that we have been careful enough about the language that we are going to write and agree to that at the end of the day, or the evening, we will be good to go.”

Acrimony between CCTA bus

Article source: http://feeds.stateline.org/~r/StatelineorgRss-Transportation/~3/ML7oRfY52-4/Deal-reached-Burlington-bus-strike-avoided