RAIL commuters in Wharfedale are bracing themselves for a winter of discontent with the expected announcement today of swingeing cuts in the timetable.

Train operator Arriva has been in crisis talks with the West Yorkshire Transport Authority Metro amid fears that as many as 700 trains a week in the county could be axed.

An acute shortage of drivers means that many services, including those from Ilkley to Bradford and Leeds, will be replaced by buses.

But a spokesman for Metro said that a leaked document stating that the cuts could lead to more than 1,000 rail journey cancellations a week in Yorkshire was not accurate.

The spokesman said: "Metro is still expecting the numbers of trains cancelled and replaced by bus services in West Yorkshire to be at the level of 80 to 100 per day as originally announced in September.

"The leaked figure of more than 1,000 train cancellations per week is certainly not one that Metro recognises from its discussions and must, we assume, be a figure which applies to the whole of the Arriva franchise.

"Discussions on the revised timetable are continuing and we are hoping to announce details of the arrangements on Thursday of this week."

But when the Gazette contacted Arriva, a company spokesman said that there was no certainty that a statement would be issued today.

The spokesman said: "In September Arriva issued a statement which outlined the affect that the driver shortage was having on the train services provided by Arriva Trains Northern and it apologised for the inconvenience to customers.

" Since Arriva issued the statement, the company has been in discussions with the Strategic Rail Authority and with the Passenger Transport Executives with a view to temporarily modifying timetables to bring about stability for customers in the short term whilst the company resolves the issue of driver shortage."

The company said it will have recruited, trained and introduced around 120 train drivers by the end of this year and intends to introduce another 170 next year.

The spokesman said: "These discussions with these parties are continuing and clearly it would be inappropriate for Arriva to make any comments on the discussions while the process is still under way."

Tom Wesley, the Ilkley chairman of the Wharfedale Rail Users' Group, said commuters were waiting for the details of the timetable cuts to be released so they knew what was happening.

"Our group feels that having a different timetable that the passengers can have confidence in, is far better than having a timetable where you don't know whether a train is going to be cancelled or not.

"I don't think it is all Arriva's fault by any means - we are in favour of a timetable that the travelling passengers can have confidence in."

It is expected that the cuts on the Wharfedale lines will affect trains running mainly in the afternoon.