yesterday blamed on falling tourist numbers and the closing of the Belmont Hotel.

Government statistics revealed that the total number of passengers using the service had dropped by nearly 46,500 last year compared to the previous year -- a 20 percent slump on the 1998 figure of 235,640.

And the Hamilton-Somerset run also saw a fall year-on-year -- but only by around 6000 passengers (two percent) on 1998. GIS also revealed more than half the trips made on the Somerset service (51 percent) were made using monthly passes.

The corresponding figure for the Paget and Warwick route was 34 percent, with a combined total for both of 10,425 journeys (42 percent).