I WAS amused by your article (LET, December 18), reporting the view of Chorley councillor Simon Jones, that the money spent on M65 motorway construction should have been used to improve public transport instead.

A number of years ago, I switched over to public transport for all of my business travel around the country and would therefore warmly welcome improved bus and train services.

It is ludicrous, however, to suggest that such improvements should be achieved to the exclusion of essential enhancement and maintenance of the road network.

Equally absurd is Coun Jones' assertion that reluctance to use public transport is due exclusively to the fact that people don't like to wait. But most amazing of all is his naive belief that all can be resolved by providing a bus timetable on the Internet.

Firstly, one of the primary objectives of the M65 is to reduce traffic congestion within Blackburn, previously made severely worse by through-traffic, particularly heavy goods vehicles. Had the money been directed instead to public transport, rail freight would have remained an impractical alternative for timely transportation of goods and HGV drives could hardly carry their load on to a double deck bus. Local buses in Blackburn cannot operate effectively if road congestion prevents their movement and having 'M65 money' to spend on even more buses to add to the congestion would not seem a very useful bonus.

The telephone and the bus have both been with us for many years. Yet, in all that time, bus companies and local authorities alike have proved singularly incapable of establishing a well-publicised and efficient telephone service to answer bus timetable inquiries.

The most fundamental flaw in Coun Jones' idea of an Internet bus timetable is that well over 90 per cent of the population does not have Internet access.

DAVID H WILLIAMS, Cypress Ridge, Blackburn.

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