Selby District Council is to spend £200,000 a year on a new subsidised travel scheme for the area's pensioners, the Evening Press can reveal today.

The new passes will allow senior citizens to travel at half-price all over North Yorkshire as well as to places such as Pontefract, Leeds, Knottingley and Doncaster by both bus and train.

They will replace the existing council bus tokens worth £8 a year, which have been denounced by Selby area pensioners as "miserly".

The scheme will be introduced next April as part of a Government initiative to reduce social exclusion and promote greater access to public transport.

At a behind-closed-doors meeting of the council's policy and finance committee, members were told the scheme would include all journeys starting or finishing in North Yorkshire between 9am and midnight.

After listening to a consultant, councillors voted unanimously to continue talks on half-fare journeys with both bus and rail companies.

They also want the new passes to cover trips to Pontefract, Knottingley, Leeds and Doncaster as well as the whole of North Yorkshire.

And instead of the basic scheme, which covers only buses, councillors opted to include rail travel as part of the new deal for pensioners.

The existing £8 bus tokens cost Selby council £84,000 a year. The new passes will cost an extra £100,000 plus a year - equivalent to around £4 on the average Band D council tax bill.

The council's Labour Group leader, Coun Geoff Lynch, said he was fully behind the half-fare scheme, which would include a contribution from the Government.

He said: "We might as well go for the jackpot rather than tackle the issue piecemeal, and build the cost into our base budget.

"Rides in Selby area tend to be long-distance and the £8 token has gone in a couple of journeys."

Selby District Age Concern coordinator Jackie Mook said: "This is excellent news - it will give older people more equality and choice, and greater access to public transport.

"The current £8 bus token is swallowed up by two or three journeys to York and back.

"These new half-fare passes to places outside Selby will enhance the quality of life of older people who cannot drive and find public transport expensive."