Busy roads always an issue

Thirty, 50, even 70 years ago it must have been evident that space on this island for man and the motor vehicle was finite.

Britain led the world in railway technology then, and a national rail network was the logical answer and it worked, until some fool invented the car.

It was clear in the early 1930s that the car was and would be a growing problem. The first was the 7,202 deaths on the road in 1933, that is twice the deaths on our roads last year with some 28 million vehicles.

From the 1930s to the 1980s, governments ran down the railways and built more and more motorways - for the cost of those motorways we could have had a national network of underground railways and a few hundred thousand acres of grass not under concrete.

Thirty years ago our politicians began allowing unfettered access to this island. It is reasonable to estimate over those 30 years, that over one million immigrants have arrived.

Did our politicians ever consider that at least 90 per cent of that one million would want a car?

Bob Wydell, Oswestry