they are wheelchair accessible.

The measure was recommended in a $15,000 46-page report commissioned by the Ministries of Community Affairs and Transport.

One recommendation that will not be carried out, in the next few years at least, is making Government buses wheelchair accessible.

It would be too expensive, Transport Minister the Hon. Ralph Marshall said at a news conference yesterday, costing around half a million for equipment and adaption.

Furthermore, the report found that 85 percent of the bus stops in Bermuda were not capable of facilitating wheelchair access to buses.

"For those reasons, any plans in this direction will be deferred,'' he said.

It was decided instead to encourage taxi drivers to buy wheelchair accessible vans and equip them with ramps.

No new taxi permits would be issued, but taxi drivers wishing to make their cabs accessible to wheelchair users would be given tax breaks.

Other recommendations Government decided to "immediately implement'' included: Conducting a survey of the known 151 wheelchair users living in Bermuda to determine their preferences for transport and abilities; making the Paget/Warwick ferries and Darrell's Wharf wheelchair accessible at a cost of $10,000-- the Somerset ferries already are; and encouraging the use of the 12 wheelchair accessible vans now in service.

Community Affairs Minister the Hon. Leonard Gibbons said the two Ministries had been working together for some time on the problem of public transport for disabled people.

"To put it the simplest way I can, the problem is that there isn't a lot of public transport accessible to the handicapped,'' he said. "At the moment they must rely on friends or themselves to get them where they need to go.

"Mr. Marshall and I suspected, frankly, that converting buses would probably be a very expensive way of tackling the problem, so we agreed we needed some advice.'' Mr. Marshall thanked the Bermuda Physically Handicapped Association who have endorsed the report's recommendations.

The report was made by Mr. Bill Griswold, a former director of Public Transport in Bermuda.