I WAS very interested in the letter from Raymond Nicholson (Letters, June 3), saying "our towns and cities are being choked to death" (by traffic) and that eventually we may all be forced to return to the era of horses and shanks' pony.

The views are typical of a car-hater and offer no practical solution. Our society has evolved in a way that means that efficient and speedy individual transport is a pre-requisite of survival and prosperity.

The sheer number of people alive today dictates the fact that not everyone can live within walking distance of their work. and the abolition of retail price fixing in the early 1970s has led to the growth of huge supermarkets where people are forced to shop if they wish to obtain their groceries at the best possible price. A car is absolutely vital in these circumstances - despite what Blackburn with Darwen councillors obviously believe, public transport is inefficient, slow, dirty and expensive and very few people can function in a wet, cold and hilly town like Blackburn using a push bike for transport.

The motor car, particularly in a wet and cold country like Britain, is here to stay and the sooner the arrogant and self-righteous members of Blackburn with Darwen Council realise and accept that fact, the better for all of us.

Instead of spending so much money on road narrowing schemes, speed bumps, and virtually unused cycle lanes, why don't they spend money on improving road surfaces for the cars and other vehicles and build subways under roads so that pedestrians can get safety from one side of the road to the other? Alternatively, footbridges could be erected across busy roads at regular intervals.

The car will always be with us because it is the most efficient way of getting from A to B. In one hundred years it may be electric or hydrogen or nuclear powered, but there will be cars, so the politicians had better get used to that fact and accommodate cars and other drivers and passengers in the way most convenient to all concerned.

And I don't think we should worry too much about cities grinding to a halt or gridlocked with cars in 20 or 30 years' time.

After all, if there had been computers in 1898 I am sure that they would have predicted that if ownership of horses continued to increase at the present rate, then by 1998 no one would be able to move anywhere because all the streets would be six feet deep in horse manure.

PAUL ATHERTON, Wythburn Avenue, Blackburn.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.