People think that other people should use public transport and then the roads will be bliss for them.

By the way, what has happened to the word "fewer"? All the comments go on about less this and less that and really they mean fewer.

CP, Bath,

Please don't go on repeating the mistakes made here in the U.S.! We are struggling with the curse of automobile addiction.

In addition to the excellent points already made here, it makes no sense to build to projections of ever more traffic. Instead, change the parameters to get the projections you want! Give folks more alternatives to automobile travel. Then get better projections.

Peter Javsicas, Philadelphia, USA

Dirty, shabby facilities are a feature of Britain, from litter-strewn roads and verges to scruffy, down-at-heel airports and stations.

Having lived in continental Europe on-and-off for a number of years and this year having used the superb integrated train, tram and bus network in Switzerland, I can say that public transport does NOT have to be inconvenient, expensive, dirty, unpunctual etc.

Long-term investment in an integrated transport infrastructure makes travel by Swiss public transport an easy, clean, affordable and indeed pleasant experience.

The ease of commuting to work in Zürich, compared with any similar, or indeed smaller, sized town in the UK, is fantastic. There are noticably fewer cars on the road and in nearly 9 months, the longest public transport delay I have experienced was a hold-up for 4 minutes.

So perhaps a look outside British shores could provide ideas other than building yet more roads?

Victoria, Zürich, Switzerland

No no no! We don't need more motorways; we need to make better use of what we already have! We can't continue building more and more with assessing the reasons for the growth in road use. Changing the way freight is transported (and buying more locally), improving the rail network and encouraging more flexible working are just of the things we need to address.

workingfromhome, Manchester,

"...the strategic network, which carries a third of all traffic, occupies only 0.16 per cent of the country". Maybe true, but the effect of roads is far greater than just their physical area, once you include the noise and pollution.

And in fact, I wonder how that 0.16 per cent compares with other countries.

"David Holmes, chairman of the RAC Foundation, said it was a myth that new roads simply filled up with traffic. " Well he would say that, but where's his evidence. We keep building roads and they keep filling up, so I'd guess he's wrong!

David in Brisbane is quite right to point out that people need to have access to jobs, education and recreation closer to where they live. Meanwhile we are building sterile developments on the edges of cities, miles from useful services. Road building and planning go hand in hand.

Will Duffay, London,

Surely there can't be a correlation between high (and rising) price of public transport, and the level of car usage....?!

Yours

Tongue firmly in cheek

Mike Nightingale, Southampton,

Any service which is planned by central government and free at the point of use, be it the road network, schools or the NHS, will always be inefficient and over-subscribed. When will people realise that you either have to pay, or you have to queue. The response to the anti road toll petition suggests that people really prefer to queue (and complain). Better get used to it.

Eric Murray, Auckland,

Erik says "So the local factory has closed or moved away. Follow work by moving house. The kids will survive a new school. Nobody has an obligation to provide you with work near to where you live. "

Whilst that is a great idea, everyone I work with (50+ people) is employed quite close to home. However we are *mobile* workers, which mean we go to customer sites. This is anywhere within a 2hour (each way) radius. We don't like it, but its the job.

Face the facts, we have a service economy, not a manufacturing economy.

Gordon Brown likes this flexibility, its why we have more jobs than our european neighbours.

He just hasn't invested in the infrastructure to keep this going!

James, Farnborough, Hants, UK

In the states - I travelled 1,000 miles on the interstates for which the toll was $30 - that's 3 cents a miles and fuel is 1/3 the price in the UK. I'll happily pay 1.5p a mile as long as the cost of fuel is also brought down to 1/3 the price - otherwise it's another rip-off. Don't we pay enough already in fuel duty, road tax, congestion charges, insurance tax, parking charges, speeding fines and if we dare to spend 6 seconds in a box junction - we are treated to a £120 fine. Wonderful.

Prav, London,

someone needs to invent hover cars. that use some kind of non polluting fuel. maybe bat pee.

'YouGov poll that it commissioned in which 2,000 people were asked if they would prefer the Government to invest in public transport or road building. Only 30 per cent voted for road building while 62 per cent chose public transport. '

whats the betting they only asked people who where walking. its hard to poll someone as they drive past at 13 miles per hour

David, Peterborough,

Simple arithmetic says more people equals more cars equals need for more roads. Papers this week report a projected 30% increase by 2050 and 100% by 2080. This is crazy. This small island long passed the optimum number of people the infrastructure can manage without gridlock and probable social unrest. Reverse immigration now. Stop encouraging unplanned families. Politicians are frightened of this subject and the Press should be doing more to educate the people about the potential problems that lie ahead if we do not change.

Malthus, Skelton, Yorkshire

99 % CORRECT. Except that the public at large accepts the need for an adequate 21st centuary strategic road network. IT HAS BEEN PAID FOR ENOUGH TIMES IN MOTORIST TAXES.
Alan Tucker

Alan Tucker, Slough, UK

Peter says: "There are just too many car-obsessed people who regard the car as a necessity, when it is and should be, commonly regarded now as a luxury we can no longer afford"

Thanks for your insight Peter. I'll try to remember that the next time I take a job at a company who can't afford city centre rents and consequently locate at a more rural location away from public transport routes. And when I need to do the family shopping for 4. Or when I want to visit my housebound grandmother. Or when my sister phones because she's stranded in town at 1am and feels intimidated by the taxi ranks and can't wait till the trains and buses start running again at 6 in the morning.

Who are you people and what kind of lives do you lead? It must be lovely to view the car as a "luxury". Presumably you enjoy the "luxury" of enough time to make buses or cycling viable. Or maybe you don't have a family. Or maybe you work from home. Thanks for your insight though.

Paul Carpenter, Leeds, UK

It seems to me that this is just the outcome of making people richer. We need to remove jobs from the majority of people within the country so they can't afford vehicles and thus can't afford to travel to get to the best paid jobs.

On a serious note, the best solution to the traffic chaos in the cities is to make air travel cheaper to personalise. Footballers can afford their own jets, with a little R&D funding, we should be able to develop some cheap personal planes to help reduce the time wasted in jams.

oh, I forgot, we are now in the time of the green Luddite - no technology unless it makes you even more miserable than you already are!

F0ul, Deeside,

The planners are projecting phantom growth. In 30 years time oil will cost over $300 per barrel, and probably three pounds per litre at the pump (in today's prices). Few people will be able to afford to drive much. Instead we need a ruthless program of heavy taxation of every mile driven and every ounce of CO2 or other greenhouse gas pumped out, then that should be used to bring along non-carbon fuel trains, buses etc so that car use declines significantly.

Martin Butcher, Ware, UK

Before looking to build new roads or motorways the government should be taking specific measures to get the vast amount of goods presently transported up and down the country in lorries off the roads and on to the railways or canals. This would have positive effects on road congestion and more importantly the environment. Is this too obvious?

Improving road congestion will not be acheived by one measure alone. Improved public transport, regulation regarding the movement of goods and road charging are all necessary to combat the awful situation on Britain's roads.

I live just outside Manchester and am bewildered at the absence of regulation applying to bus companies who compete for passengers on the busiest routes. Buses that are inevitably empty appear every 30 seconds, they cause great congestion and produce a vast amount of pollution. Clearly the people who run the bus companies don't care, why are politicians so inadequate that they can't bring the obvious improvements?

Ian, Hazel Grove, England

With fuel costs escalating and the likelihood of oil stocks dwindling in a few years, we should as some have already said being investing in rebalancing job opportunities so people become less obsessed with commuting ridiculous distances by car, thereby making it practical to make better use of public transport, which, because there are less cars would be more efficient and effective. We do not need any more roads, as they merely encourage our car obsessed culture to make even more journeys, until, very quickly, they too become inadequate. The HGV problem can also be overcome by beginning to invest in unpicking the ridiculous merry go round of transporting goods hundreds or thousands of miles to distribution centres only to transport them back again, starting with food! Rant over!

Philip, Cambs,

A very large percentage of the traffic on the road at peak time or indeed at any time is business related whether freight haulage or individuals visiting customers, suppliers etc. These people will always use the road and their companies will always pay the bills as it is integral to their business. The increased costs however will be passed on to the end customer/consumer. The result will be that the roads will remain jammed but the government will rake in revenue from road pricing and we'll all be worse off due to the incresed costs loaded on to the everyday products we buy. If they actually used the Tax paid by the road users at present (instead of just 15% of it) on road building they would already we on the way to alleviating some of the problem.

NR, London,

"David Holmes, chairman of the RAC Foundation, said it was a myth that new roads simply filled up with traffic." - tell that to the people stuck on the RECENTLY WIDENED western M25, or the residents of Newbury where journey times are now LONGER than before the bypass was built.

Build a road and it fills. Gets you nowhere.

Dan G, Reading,

The real problem is that it costs about £4000+ to own a car and not much extra to use it. We need to shift the insurance costs and tax onto a mileage basis so if you drive less you pay less. This would change travel patterns and we need to do this first as the road network we needed would be different to what is needed now.
A new high speed rail network would reduce rail and road congestion and reduce air travel.

Ray Wilkes, Shipley, Yorkshire

Move long distance freight onto the trains, close any motoerway exit that is within ten miles of another one, give everyone 12,000 miles of road fund free motoring per year then charge 20p per mile excess.

I could suggest more, but I'm not an overpaid government consultant.

Mike Poulsen, Reading, Berkshire

Well, so much for the political will to tackle global warming. They should be thinking much more of increasing public transport. Paying "green" taxes that are not to be spent on this is a scam and they should not be levied unless we can clearly see where they are being spent.

Helena, Spain,

Britain desperately needs new roads. Not just for essential journeys to work but for freight essential to our economic wellbeing as well as for leisure, tourism and shopping where privatised public transport will never be available or cheap or reliable enough. The French have been expanding their motorways for years. Even the Dutch, with a similar density of population, have a better motorway system. Our friends in Spain tell us that Britain is the laughing stock of Europe. They think our conservationists rule the country. This study should be implemented before it is too late and the country together with our economy grinds to a halt.

Paul Bartlett, Taunton, UK

The time has surely come to cap the size of our vehicle base. Forcing hauliers and ordinary motorists or prospective road users to find other ways to travel! Once the cap is perminently in place the true bottle necks can be found and rectified in the knowlege once fixed, always fixed. On an island this size, it is simply imposible to keep increasing vehicle population. Out side of the box thinking is surely required to fix the problem. Once done the true value of being able to run a vehicle will be realised and the obuse of roads will lessen in the fear of loosing a license.

Ray B, Newcastle, UK

David Holmes says“Our children and grandchildren will not accept poorer standards of service from transport than we have today.” Are we to assume, then, that they will accept a country paved in concrete; a country whose population is diseased from breathing in exhaust fumes, or a country, which wages war on other countries for oil?
Thank goodness for people like David and Peter (have your say). Better public services are the answer. It is both shortsighted and dangerous to think otherwise.

Karen Lindsay, Beijing, China

I was in London at the weekend and yes it is true a car is more of a hindrance than a help. I used public transport to good effect throughout the weekend. However I would like to see a government minister live a professional working life without a car in Cumbria where with the local bus service it could take you 1.5 hours to travel between two towns 16 miles apart. You would be quicker walking. People need to realise that the car is essential in the country and generally the roads are not busy. Therefore why should I pay road tolls when it will not improve my life.

John, Egremont,

its all well and good pumping money into public transport but people dont want to use it. Busses are ok if you can go from near your house to near your destination in 1 trip as soon as you have to take multiple busses/trains it becomes a nightmare. For my job i just couldnt use public transport i go to on average 3 sites a day all over leeds and would spend the entire day changing busses.

I aggree something needs to be done but as far as i can see building roads is the only solution that has any chance of working. Its also worth thinging that a sooner a car gets to its destination the sooner its turned off and stops polluting so though it may sound odd more roads could if done in the right palces reduce polution

Jonathan, Doncaster/Leeds, Yorkshire

How much does road congestion cost the economy each year?. Public transport is not the panacea that will wash all of our congestion problems away.
Also the idea that road pricing will take traffic off the road is rubbish, people have to travel to their place of work, education etc, How are we supposed to get there?.
People are not car obsessed, a family car is a necessity in this day and age.

Christy Conroy, Leicester, UK

We have paid for a top-class transport system, at least twice, but we have been diddled out of it. Roads, railways, airports - whatever, we need them to start DOING something rather than sitting on their thumbs or throwing money at consultants.

Frank Upton, Solihull,

What is the matter with you people, the car will never go away because public transport is not convienant, it is expensive, dirty , not on time and does not go where you want when you want. As for carbon emissions the car produces nothing compared to other forms of pollution. The same answer - more tax either direct or indirect.

Less people in this country - yes I agree, that is why I am leaving but I shall be back and forth with a car because I am free with a car, it is a very sad experience arriving at Dover when you have enjoyed the European road networks.

john, clevedon,

So they want to concrete over the whole of the country, more roads, more houses, more airport runways, all because we are letting too many people in.
Also the people we let in tend to breed at a greater rate, so one problem is compounded by another.
Have these politicians not the sense to realise what will happen, have they not a grasp of the bigger picture?
Violence will errupt as Brits can only take so much of being told what to accept, and as soon as there is a slight down turn in the economy, all the frustration will come out on to the streets.

Pete, St Albans, England

Mankind has survived for thousands of years with people living within walking distance of work. When work wasn't available locally, people migrated to where it was available. Those who didn't, starved.

So the local factory has closed or moved away. Follow work by moving house. The kids will survive a new school. Nobody has an obligation to provide you with work near to where you live.

People don't have a God-given right to pollute and clog-up the roads in a 50 mile daily commute, simply becuase some nut invented the car.

Erik, Gatwick, UK

'It suggests mitigating some of the impact of the new roads by building them in tunnels through sensitive areas'

You mean like the tunnel they built through Twyford Down and the one they promised for Stonehenge?

'It also recommends making some car-only'

Why not restrict HGV's to the inside lane of motorways during peak periods and in problem areas, like they do in Europe?

But ultimately Jon's right. There are too many people for this small island to cope with.

Paul Ritchie, Southampton,

What David says is correct: There are just too many car-obsessed people who regard the car as a necessity, when it is and should be, commonly regarded now as a luxury we can no longer afford.

Peter Day, Doncaster, UK/ Yorkshire

Britain needs neither less people nor more motorways. Instead people need to have access to jobs, education and recreation closer to where they live and they need to be able to access it by public methods of transportation like buses, ferries, trains, trams, tube, busways and taxis. People also need to be able to cycle and walk to work and car school trips should be discouraged. Congestion pricing is an attractive idea simply because it allows for a price closer to the true cost of travelling long distances regularly by cars to be reflected (ie charged) to motorists.

David, Brisbane, Australia

"Britain needs a new network of motorways "

No it doesnt it just needs less people.

Jon, Northumberland, UK