Foxwoods Resort Casino will stop providing employee shuttle bus service from Norwich and other locations at the end of next month, a move that promises to complicate the daily commutes of hundreds of workers.

In a notice posted Friday at the casino and at the commuter parking lots, Foxwoods management announced that effective Feb. 29 it will end the shuttles that operate daily from two Norwich lots and on weekends and holidays from Route 2 lots adjacent to Interstate 95 in North Stonington and west of Route 78 in Stonington.

Service will continue to operate from a Route 2 lot a half-mile from MGM Grand at Foxwoods, according to the notice signed by Steve Heise, Foxwoods' vice president of human resources.

Hundreds of casino employees living in the vicinity of the main Norwich lot on Route 2, many of whom are of Asian descent, rely on the Peter Pan shuttle buses to get to and from work. Another small lot known as the viaduct lot is located downtown.

"It's going to be hard. I don't drive," a woman at the main Norwich lot who wouldn't give her name said Monday afternoon before boarding a bus. "But I have to work."

She said the buses that operate from the lot are "always full," though that was not the case Monday.

"It's crazy," said another woman, who also declined to give her name. "If no bus, how they go to work?"

Beverly Goulet, Norwich's human services director, said the end of the shuttle service would cause a serious hardship for Foxwoods employees who live downtown and don't own cars or can't afford gasoline.

"A lot of people are not going to be able to afford it, so some people could lose their jobs," she said.

While her department has a small emergency fund that provides bus tickets for people to get to job interviews or appointments, "We certainly don't have enough funds to provide regular transportation every day for people to get to work," Goulet said.

Foxwoods indicated it would help employees organize carpools and access information about alternative transportation.

Norwich Mayor Peter Nystrom said he had fielded a request that the city urge Southeast Area Transit to run a shuttle bus for casino employees.

UAW at Foxwoods, the union representing some 2,500 table-games dealers at Foxwoods, including MGM Grand at Foxwoods, reacted negatively to the end of shuttle service, as it did when Foxwoods first curtailed service in the spring of 2010. The casino, which the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe owns, discontinued shuttles from a Groton lot in May of that year, at which time it also ended weekday service from the North Stonington and Stonington lots.

The union filed a grievance over the 2010 curtailment of service, claiming the move violated the casino's contract with the union. An arbitrator ruled that Foxwoods acted within the bounds of the contract.

"We are extremely mindful that management's decision to totally eliminate off-site employee parking and bus service will cause serious hardship to some of our members - and many other team members," Mary Johnson, the union president, said Friday in a letter to union members. "However, after consulting with our lawyers and local union officers, in light of the previous arbitration decision, we concluded that we would best serve our members by settling this dispute without litigation."

Johnson said the closing of the Norwich lot and the termination of shuttle service will generate "large savings" for Foxwoods and that the union expects to see a share of those savings in the contract it is negotiating with the tribe.

Terms of the union's previous contract, which expired Dec. 31, have been extended through March, Johnson said. The 2010 arbitration decision noted that a Foxwoods official had concluded that the casino could save $2 million a year by implementing the changes then contemplated in the off-site shuttle services.

Foxwoods said all employees are welcome to park in the MGM Lot on Route 2 and that those with Great Cedar Garage parking passes will be allowed to park in the garage every day of the week on any of its five levels. MGM Grand employees with MGM parking passes will be allowed to park on Level 5 of the MGM Grand garage all days.

"Over the years our team members have approached us and asked to park on property instead of being forced to use the commuter buses," Heise, the Foxwoods vice president, said in a statement Monday. "Since the opening of our MGM facility in 2008 we have been able to offer limited on-site parking to all our employees and with this in mind and over the last few years we have begun to phase out our employee shuttle buses.

"We are now able to offer on-site parking to all of our team members and eliminate the remaining off-property shuttle buses."

Day Staff Writer Claire Bessette contributed to this report.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com