MANY people continue to be concerned about increasing car congestion judging from recent letters and reports in your newspaper, yet few solutions are suggested. Roadworks, the school run, even the number of buses are blamed, yet the real cause is too many people driving cars.

Over the last 15 years the population of our conurbation has risen rapidly and many households now have several vehicles. The only solution is to persuade people to drive less.

London chooses to charge £11.50 a day to drive into central areas, this would reduce congestion in Poole and Bournemouth if introduced here. Other cities choose to encourage public transport as buses are on average 20 times more efficient at moving people than cars.

If people have the choice when coming into Bournemouth or Poole of either using their car, having a slow journey along congested roads, problems of finding a parking space and paying £10 via their phone to park or alternatively having a comfortable and relatively quick bus journey to the centre of town, many might choose the bus.

Measures to provide comfortable and quick bus journeys include using double deck buses as these provide seats to everybody during busy periods, provision of bus only roads, reducing parking along many roads to allow larger vehicles to pass, bus priority at junctions and Bournemouth council sorting the dangerous mess of buses in the Square.

The alternative to these measures is to continue to do very little.

This will result in the near future of a major traffic jam with cars being stuck for many hours and lives lost as ambulances and fire engines could not get through.

People may say it couldn't happen here, but it has already happened in many cases around the world, if we choose to continue to do very little it may well happen here.

Philip Sandom

Farcroft Road, Poole