Crisis hit rail company Arriva Trains Northern has come under fresh attack from a transport chief over punctuality of its emergency timetable.

Councillor Mick Lyons, chairman of West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Authority, said the company, which operates most of Bradford's trains was still giving a 'very poor' service to its passengers.

He said: "Even with the emergency timetable in place our passengers still cannot rely on Arriva Trains to get them to their destination on time. Further more trains are still running without the correct number of units.

"Arriva are now telling us that even though we have agreed 1,000 trains less per week, they have no intention of running them to time or doing anything about running them to time.

"I am absolutely appalled at this attitude, I think that it is disgusting and I shall be talking to the Strategic Rail Authority immediately about the situation."

Coun Lyons hit out at the train company - which has now been fined over £30million in a year by the SRA - after a meeting of the passenger transport authority's bus and train reliability working group in Leeds.

The company is running its emergency timetable and replacing some trains with buses due to a shortage of drivers.

Arriva says it is training large numbers of drivers and inherited the problem when it took over the franchise last year.

But Councillor Ann Ozolins, a Bradford member of the PTA said: "I believe that the franchise should be taken from them. A lot of passengers are very upset and it is definitely driving people back to their cars."

Ray Price, managing director of Arriva Trains Northern, said his comments had been misunderstood.

He added: "I am certainly not suggesting that we have no intention of running services to time. Arriva is above all else committed to running a safe, reliable and punctual service. We have dramatically reduced cancellations since we implemented the temporary timetable.

"Our driver training programme is well on target and we are achieving the commitment for the recovery plan agreed with the Strategic Rail Authority and for passenger transport executives which will lead to the restoration of full services."

But Coun Lyons said: "The only reason we accepted the emergency timetable was to ensure that trains would run to time and that passengers would have the certainty of knowing that their trains would turn up."

The district's fed up passengers also face fresh problems because of a row over pay.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport Union has called strikes at Arriva Train Northern. Now Northern England faces stoppages on January 24 to 25 and February 5 to 6.