How bad is your journey to work? What should be done to improve the ailing network?

All the reporters and interviewees had the same basic assumption "people were going to travel more, further and faster". The "solutions" that were being promoted involved High Technology or Construction.

Most of the interviewees were either drivers who wanted change but were not prepared to pay for it or promoters of change who stood to profit from it. Everyone enthusiastically overlooked one very simple fact "People do not travel more, they travel further".

If you grasp this point then a whole lot of simple low tech and cheep solutions open up and most of them involve local authorities and planning permission. But it won't happen because no one can make any money out of it!
Philip Martin

I successfully share journeys with 2 other car drivers that I work with, yet we all live about 10 miles apart along the same route. The government could provide a wholly road tax funded website to bring together people that share similar journeys.

It is quite conceivable on an industrial estate that people working for different companies may not know of each other, and have travelled in to work from the same area. In the absence of good public transport this may provide a good alternative.
R Pearson

You should be able to reduce traffic with a combination of the use of school buses and changing the starting and finishing times of school hours. Pupils seem to be going to school earlier and earlier, I can always tell when the schools are on holiday my journey to Manchester takes half the time.
Denise Jackson, UK

Limit the number of vehicles on the roads to the present day levels (26 m). Then only allow a new vehicle on the road network when an old one is scrapped using the vehicle registration system
D.Woodhead

I've lived in Zurich for the last 3 years and lived in Reading for 10 years before that. They are similar in size. I haven't owned a car in Zurich and have had little need to. Within Zurich I do everything by tram or bicycle. I lived a couple of miles out of the city center and had a tram every seven minutes. In Reading, I live a similar distance out and it is a 30 min bus service, unreliable in rush hour because of the traffic. I now cycle to work across the heart of Zurich where bike and pedestrians frequently mingle without hassle. �2 a year buys your bike sticker, giving �1,000,000 liability insurance. The Swiss are currently building and planning tunnels for 15 years ahead. The UK needs to invest for the future in its transport systems.
Dave Walker, UK/Switzerland

For far too long the tree hugging bunny lovers have held up proper road developments, which this government has successfully hidden behind in the name of the environment. We want to use our cars, we pay our taxes and the government is there to serve us, the silent majority. Railways are a business with paying customers. These customers should pay the going rate or find an alternative. Motorists should not have to go on subsidising failing strategies. Give us a decent road system, something mainland Europe has had for decades.
Tony Cohen, England

There is of course can be no simple fix-it solution. Offer reasonably priced and reliable public transport that takes people to where they want to go to. Make it unpleasant for car users in cities, especially in the centre. I think everyone knows that. It just needs the investment.
Mark Duke,

People make trips because the places they want to go are further away e.g. out-of-town shopping centres. This is due to 30 years of poor planning. It will take another 30 to return city centres to be what they should be: centres. The same applies to public transport: fine when it's into a hub and out again, impractical when going from one suburban outpost to another.
Sam Marshall, UK

There is too much congestion on the UK's roads. Public transport will not work, as long as a car can be used. No matter how inconvenient the car journey, it will be more convenient than a bus or train, neither of which can offer the convenience of travel (no waiting in the rain for half an hour), nor the comfort (warm, dry, radio playing). I suggest that a major alternative to cars for shorter journeys, especially those in town, is thru the promotion of PTW (Powered Two Wheelers). Now some people complain you'll get wet riding bikes, and they are dangerous. Well, they are more dangerous than cars, but with driver education, and a greater number of bikes on the road, awareness is bound to increase, and with it safety. As for getting wet, I get no wetter than when waiting for a bus, but I'm still home in half the time.
Andrew Poodle, Scotland

As a motorist I would rather spend 2 hours in a traffic jam than 30 minutes on stuffy, cramped, out of date, over priced public transport. It is also impossible to get to most of the places I need to go to by public transport, without the need for an overnight stay.
Brian Tricker, ENGLAND

It seems to me that this could be a good debate but Paul Watters does not answer the questions or points that Stephen raises. In particular that most car journeys are very local and have a huge adverse effect on society with little benefit for the driver of most of these journeys.
Mike Lawrence, UK

Congestion is an effect but it seems that policy makers have failed to identify the real cause. As congestion is worse in the mornings and late afternoon on weekdays it is obviously caused by people commuting to work and home again. My solution is quite simple, reduce the need for people to commute to work through, for example, greater use of homeworking or encourage employers to stagger their start and finishing times, thereby reducing the number of people wishing to use roads at the same time. Other factors such as roadworks and slow-moving loads exacerbate the current problem so these should be eliminated or kept to a minimum during "peak" periods.
Paul Taylor, Nottingham, England

Invest in the railways and get the majority of trucks off the road,move goods by rail and have trucks collect from the station and deliver from 8pm to 8am. This would easily free up the motorways and dual carriage ways.
David Ward,

It is a myth that motorists pay an unfair amount of tax. People who say this tend to conveniently leave out the cost (to the NHS) of road traffic accidents, the cost of policing the roads and of maintenance. Once this is taken into account it turns out that motorists are actually being subsidised by the taxpayer.
Laurence Taylor, UK

We need people who can make the brave and revolutionary changes that are needed need to provide an effective and sustainable transport system. Current levels of traffic growth are unsustainable, and building new roads will only postpone the the time when the real, and probably painfull, changes to the transport system need to be made. Who has the vision to achieve this?
Mike, Bristol, UK

I live in the country, and although I am only 4 miles from my office in the local town, I do not use public transport or cycle. The buses are at very inconvenient times and more expensive than the car, and the road is too dangerous for cycling at the time I need to go in to work. If there was a cycle path, I would use it, but why would the council spend a large sum of money to put in a cycle path just for me and a few others? It seems that for those who live in the country, there is very little alternative to the car. Of course, one benefical aspect of the recently suggestion congestion charging, is that it will not affect people who drive in the country, because we have very little congestion!
James Hughes, UK

No one ever looks beyond the cars and sees the people, our roads are jammed with people. Their cars are secure and private. Road charging will only have a short term effect, it will increase the cost of living and hurt those who can least afford it. Why not tackle the reasons for the Jams, Why are so very many people trying to get to the same area at the same time? As long as we have to earn a crust to survive and it involves having to travel, there will always be jams.
Mr Brooks,

The best way to decrease traffic jams is to make Public Transport (buses, trams railways and internal flights) free to the public and motorists. For the hauliers, railways should also be free to wean off the heavy goods vehicles from the motorways. This could be organised on a system similar to NHS in UK. This idea can then be spread to Europe and USA. People with real physical difficulties should be given free access to door to door services such as taxis and mini-buses. Holiday transport and transfers should also be made free in UK to attract Brits out of their cars to much improved public transport. Ken Livingstone should adopt this is idea to reduce Congestion in London as a Pilot project.
Anant Ghelani, UK

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