A BUNGLING bus driver halted traffic yesterday after attempting to manoeuvre the 14-foot vehicle under a 10-ft bridge.

Prince of Wales Road in Westbourne was closed both ways between the Milburn Road junction and the Nelson Road junction throughout the afternoon after the bus became trapped.

Jenni Wilkinson, Head of Marketing, Yellow Buses, said: "An engineer has been suspended while an internal investigation is carried out. We can confirm the bus was on a road test and was not using one of our normal routes."

The vehicle was out of service, and the driver was not injured.

Westbourne resident Michael Smith said buses don’t use the route because of the bridge.

He added: “It’s incredible because if you look at the side of it, you can see the roof of the top deck has gone over to the side.

“I have lived here for 12 years and there’s always someone scraping the top but I have never seen one jammed underneath.”

The 74-year-old said it was a “good job” there were no passengers on the bus at the time of the collision.

A passing policeman, who did not want to be named, saw the crash and immediately began redirecting traffic.

He said: “It’s a 14 foot six bus trying to get through a 10 foot nine gap.”

The air was let out of the vehicle’s tyres before a recovery lorry dragged it out from underneath the bridge around an hour-and-a-half after it first became stuck.

The officer said the bus was “properly wedged in”.

A Network Rail engineer attended to assess any damage to the bridge, and representatives from Yellow Buses were also at the scene.

The front corner of the bus cracked under the pressure, while the roof bent to the front left-hand side.

The bottom of the bus had also buckled.

A spokesperson for the Stagecoach Group said rail passengers were unaffected by the drama, adding: “We do have an engineer on the way to inspect the bridge but it is not affecting our passenger services.”