It was no-go from Halifax regional council.

Mayor Peter Kelly emerged from a four-hour closed door council meeting on Tuesday night to announce they would be turning down an offer of binding arbitration as a way of ending the transit strike, now in its 13th day.

The union representing over 700 striking Metro Transit workers had voted in favour of making their case to a provincial arbitrator earlier on Tuesday, setting the stage for tonight’s council meeting.

“Council had a good debate, and decided to work with the head of Conciliation Services for the Province of Nova Scotia, who was appointed to the transit issue today,” Kelly said in a release issued after 11 p.m. “We need a solution that gets our transit system moving again, but we need to get that solution at the bargaining table.”

Had council agreed to arbitration, buses and ferries could have been running within 24 hours, according to ATU Local 508 President Ken Wilson.

“We’re prepared to go to binding arbitration, that means we’ll put the buses on the road if (the option is) supported by the mayor and council as soon as possible,” Wilson told reporters outside the Dartmouth Sportsplex just after 3 p.m.

Kelly had consistently said he wants the two sides to go back to negotiation since talks broke down last Thursday. Wilson, on the other hand, has consistently said the municipality is not willing to actually negotiate – presenting four different take-it-or-leave-it contracts since conciliation talks began on Jan. 29.

That the union would vote for an arbitrated settlement appears to have been a foregone conclusion.

Minutes after hundreds of members exited the vote, many donned red T-shirts with “Arbitration is the Answer” written across the back. They carried placards with the same slogan across the Macdonald Bridge on a march to Halifax City Hall.

“We knew the membership would support binding arbitration, they just needed it explained to them,” Wilson said to reporters. “We had to prepare either way. If the membership wouldn’t have accepted it, we would have put the stuff in the closet, we would have took a different approach.”

Wilson said the possibility of an arbitrated settlement was brought up between himself and Metro Transit Director Eddie Robar while they were still in negotiations – and that neither were in favour of the option at the time.