At first sight, the idea of bus travellers between Bradford and Dewsbury breaking their journey at Oakenshaw seems wholly unacceptable. Yet the bus operators and Metro have been placed in a very difficult position by the proposal to close the bridge over the railway at Raw Nook, Oakenshaw, for repairs and strengthening.

Somehow, unless the bus service is to be cancelled, passengers have to be got from one side of the bridge to the other, and according to Metro there are only two ways of doing it. One is by taking the buses on a lengthy diversion. The other is for passengers to alight from one bus, walk cross the bridge, and board another bus at the far side.

As one of the local residents points out, it would mean pensioners with bags of shopping and mothers with children and push-chairs picking their way through what would virtually be a building site.

Railtrack say that with hindsight, the public and the bus operators should have been given more than a mere few days' notice of the intention to close. However, it is hard to see how that could have made any difference to the practical problems involved. Whatever happens, the travelling public are going to be inconvenienced.

Before Bradford Council Highways Department provides the closure order, it needs to make sure that there are absolutely no alternatives available. And if it finds that there aren't and the two-bus option is to go ahead, it needs to insist that Railtrack takes every precaution to ensure that passengers are able to cross the bridge safely and with the minimum of inconvenience.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.