Congestion is growing at an uncontrollable rate and the Government’s proposed solution, road tolls, will come too late to prevent widespread gridlock. Almost every aspect of our daily lives, from commuting to shopping to leisure activities, has become dependent on the car, according to Transport Trends, published by the Department for Transport.

The total distance travelled by Britain’s cars has doubled since 1979 to 247 billion miles a year, and the number of private cars has risen by 12 million to 26 million.

Last year cars accounted for 85 per cent of the total distance we travelled. The average person spent 221 hours in a car and covered 5,500 miles at an average speed of less than 25mph.

There are now more homes that possess two or more cars than homes that do not have a car. One in 20 homes now has at least three cars, up from one in 50 in 1980. The typical family no longer shares a car but has one for each adult member, with 60 per cent of cars on the road containing only the driver.

The Government is considering tolls of up to £1.34 a mile on congested roads but has said that the system could not be introduced nationwide until 2015 at the earliest. Yet the growth in traffic is rising again after stalling at the turn of the century. On motorways and trunk roads the average speed in the evening peak fell from 55mph in 1995 to 51mph in 2003.

Transport analysts believe that society has reached a tipping point, with car dependency so endemic that it is virtually impossible to reverse the growth in traffic.

The demise of local shops has pushed people towards edge-of-town shopping centres. Cars were used for 62 per cent of shopping trips last year, compared with 49 per cent in 1991. The Government’s policy of offering choice in health and education is also prompting people to travel further rather than use local hospitals and schools. The proportion of 5 to 10 year olds going to school by car has increased from 27 per cent to 41 per cent in the past 14 years All the main trends in the report are negative, with walking and cycling both falling to record lows. Yet a quarter of all car trips last year were under two miles in length. The average person walked only 192 miles last year, down by a fifth from 237 miles in 1990.

The number of rail journeys is at its highest level for half a century, with growth fuelled by congestion on the roads. But buses, which are often caught in that congestion, are declining almost everywhere outside London. The number of bus journeys has halved since 1969.

While the overall cost of motoring has fallen slightly in real terms since 1980, bus, coach and rail fares have risen by 37 per cent.

Much of the increase in traffic has been caused by women narrowing the gap with men on car ownership levels. In 1976 there were more than twice as many qualified men drivers as women. The proportion of women with driving licences has doubled since then and now accounts for 45 per cent of licence holders.

The rise in car ownership has forced the Government to abandon its target of reducing congestion by 6 per cent by 2010. It now expects congestion to rise by up to 20 per cent by the end of the decade.

The nation’s car fleet is growing by more than half a million a year but still has a long way to go to match American levels of car ownership. There are 750 cars for every 1,000 people in the US, compared with 460 in Britain.

The amount of time spent travelling has remained constant over the last 30 years at an hour a day. But the switch from walking and public transport to private cars has allowed people to travel further in the same time.

Car engines have become much quieter but the disturbance caused by cars has grown because of the increase in traffic. A third of people say they are adversely affected by traffic noise.

Chris Grayling, the Shadow Transport Secretary, said that the Government needed to focus on capacity on roads and railways now rather than making vague plans for tolls in future. “Far from offering alternatives to the car, the Government has been busy cancelling tram schemes and abandoning projects to expand the railways.”

Stephen Joseph, the director of the sustainable transport group Transport 2000, said: “The answer to rising traffic growth is to reduce the need to travel. When the last bank closed in Liss in Hampshire, a million extra car miles were generated as people travelled to other branches."