PHUKET'S forward-and-reverse bus depot is to finally open in the middle of October after a deal-setting meeting today.

The buses will try a novel method to end the impasse over how vehicles should exit from the new station. Entering Phuket's main north-south thoroughfare, Thepkasattri Road, has always been the bugbear.

Locals have never been entirely happy with the various plans for the buses to leave. Now buses will head south towards Phuket City, sticking to the left-hand lane . . . then swing into the existing U-turn space if they are heading north, as most will be.

The revolutionary concept will be tested for three months. If it works, planners will persevere.

A meeting at Provincial Hall involving Vice Governor Nivit Aroonrat, the Director of the Road Department, Aroon Snech, the Director of the Transport Office, Kanok Siripanichkoon, and local people, including the Mayor of Rassada, Surithin Leanaudom, plus police from Phuket City, opted to try the new approach.

The initial concept was to carve a new space through the median strip directly opposite the new bus station. But this would have pointed all the departing buses in the direction of the home of the mayor.

The nine rai of land for the bus station was bought for 80 million baht and the building cost 47 million baht to build.

The old bus station, crowded onto two rai in Phang Nga Road, almost in the centre of Phuket City, has been operating since 1983. Traditional seung taew buses that link the island's villages will shift from the downtown market when the interprovincial buses move to the new bus station.

Police have closed other turning-points in Thepkassatri Road when they proved to be prone to frequent traffic crashes and injuries and deaths.