It's going to be a great summer in Keighley. After months of detailed planning, the curtain is being raised on a project to inject a new lease of life into the award-winning town centre.

One of the first stages is the launch of Keighley's first ever park-and-ride scheme. It is aimed at countless thousands of shoppers, tourists and rail passengers, and will provide a free link between the railway station and the Damside car park, with various other stops in between.

It is scheduled for five weeks during the summer, but hopes are very much alive that it can become permanent.

The simple fact is that we cannot keep on taking our cars with us wherever we go. Several green-transport schemes in other parts of the country have failed, with motorists being able to claim unreliability, cost and a huge travel to work time difference.

But with a truly integrated bus-rail public transport project such as the one in Keighley, many of these excuses are eliminated. It will attract visitors and hopefully more shoppers from outside areas - Skipton, Leeds, and Bradford will have direct rail links.

Add to that the growing list of fun and entertainment events being staged in the town from the beginning of June to the end of August - from the Gala to the Festival, from street fairs to childrens' entertainment - and you have a package which would be hard to beat.

An awful lot of people, from all walks of life, have already put in a lot of time, effort and money to make this happen. Cynicism must be conquered and we should shout the message loud and clear that Keighley has a great deal to offer. Let's make it a town fit for the new Millennium.

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