Residents fighting for the reinstate-ment of a bus service between Yeadon and Bradford have been offered a lifeline - but vowed to fight for a permanent solution.

Angry former passengers of the 647/747 Bradford to Yeadon, via Greengates, service turned out for a second public meeting with Metro, the West York-shire Passenger Transport Authority.

The bus was axed without warning last October and has not been replaced, leaving the busy A658 road between Apperley Bridge and Aireborough without a public transport link.

A promise given at an earlier meeting that Metro would "look again" at the situation had given some hope that the service could be restarted.

But instead the meeting heard from Metro that to do so would require it to subsidise First Bradford to the tune of £130,000 just to run the service during the daytime.

Instead, it has offered to run a six-month trial of a weekdays-only service - either three times a day between Bradford and Yeadon at a subsidy cost of £40,000 or five times a day between Yeadon and Greengates for £30,000. Both would only run from 9.30am to 2pm.

Clive Woods, of the Aireborough Civic Society, said that was unacceptable.

"A skeleton temporary service was be-ing suggested at what seemed to be a very high cost," he said. "Residents felt that both off peak service options were so limited that they were almost 'designed to fail'.

"I live in Yeadon on the Westfield Estate and am appalled by the decline in our bus services in the past two years - at a time of increasing numbers of cars and traffic congestion.

"For me the loss of the 647 is the last straw. It means that people living in this part of Yeadon have no real access to Greengates, Bradford, nor to Yeadon Town Centre on evenings and Sundays."

Metro has insisted that the old service had to be axed due to low passenger numbers.

But Councillor John Bale (Con, Guise-ley and Rawdon) said: "Metro's offer to provide services of three or five serv-ices a day, with nothing after 2pm, is really derisory to the residents who need regular services throughout the day."

He did, however, welcome Metro's offer to temporarily reinstate a local service between Yeadon, Westfield, Greengates and Eccleshill Health Centre. It is set to run again from the end of April.