THIS week brought the encouraging news that finally bus users are to get the kind of safer surroundings they have been crying out for.

For too many years people using public transport have had to put up with dark, dirty, sometimes smelly and frequently frightening bus and rail stations more reminiscent of Victorian England than a country approaching the millennium.

No wonder people have always preferred to take the car. How can we be expected to give up the relative personal safety a car can offer, being locked in our warm cocoons, as opposed to shivering nervously in a seedy unlit station?

Leeds, as is its wont, led the way with an extravagant revamp of its bus and coach station, but not before time - its previous facilities were a poor example of what a big city could offer visitors.

Now the West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Authority (WYPTA) has announced a £1.64 million package of security measures and help points to be installed at all Metro-owned bus stations, including Ilkley.

Unfortunately it does not include Otley which, in fact, is probably one of the stations most in need of improving.

Hardly a week passes without a report of vandalism, fights or pensioners being threatened by mobs of teenagers. The bus station is not the nicest place to wait at night, once the town is deserted, and particularly when services fail to appear - which is fairly regularly.

At least if cameras were in place commuters could feel a little safer, and with help points installed, they could at least find out if their bus was running and if so, how long they would have to wait.

But crying over the lack of such amenities is like crying over spilt milk. Otley is not going to enjoy the benefits of other Metro stations and this time, no-one is to blame.

And while tenants of the Orchard Gate shopping centre - of which the bus station is part - might feel aggrieved at paying to improve conditions for passengers, they would reap the rewards eventually.

They also suffer from the repeated acts of vandalism which spread out through the town from the bus station. They have their windows smashed and their doorways covered in litter every weekend.

Surely everyone would benefit from adopting a joint approach from tenants, the town council and Metro to try to make the whole area one that is safer, more secure and a place which doesn't put the rest of the town to shame.

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