IF THERE is a carrot-and-stick approach to the government's bid to get people out of their cars and on to public transport, it may receive a backlash from motorists if measures are deemed to involve more compulsion than persuasion.

And deputy premier John Prescott is surely risking that reaction over plans pencilled into his forthcoming White Paper on transport which would give councils the power to slap taxes on non-residential parking spaces in towns and cities.

The aim, of course, is noble - that of cutting congestion and pollution while at the same time raising massive amounts of revenue to improve buses, trains and trams.

But it is the sequence of taxing first in order to provide eventual benefits that may take decades to arrive that will draw the drivers' ire and will, surely, provoke resistance from town-centre retailers and businesses.

One immediate risk is that firms whose costs will be driven up will flee from in-town locations. Another is that town-centre retailers, already alarmed by the shift to out-of-town shopping developments catering for car-borne customers, will suffer if town-centre parking is made dearer or more inconvenient than it already is.

It may be that Mr Prescott's plan involves making out-of-town developments a prime target for the parking tax - though this will entail imposing a public tax on private facilities - but it is hardly likely to revive town centres if they are to be equally costly to shop and work in.

Additionally, motorists' patience, already tested by high taxes and over-prescriptive traffic calming measures in towns, may snap to the level of a serious political backlash if this scheme is regarded as the last straw in an official war against them.

For while they concede that much needs to be done about congestion and pollution, most of the efforts appear to be directed against them rather than making public transport more adequate and attractive and less expensive.

If Mr Prescott is to escape a big political backfire, a better balance must be struck and much more significant strides made in improving public transport first, with less hounding of the poor old motorists - who are, after all, the public too.

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