THE mood of resignation that something must be done to end traffic congestion in Britain's towns and cities, with measures to deter cars, may well switch to rebellion if proposed anti-car measures are not matched with viable public transport alternatives.

For the government Green Paper on transport, being unveiled this week by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, is set to include such radical ideas as motorists being charged up to £4 to drive into the centres of towns like Blackburn or Burnley at peak times, taxes on office car parking spaces and even compulsory park and ride schemes for urban shoppers .

Such measures may be tolerated on paper, as the Green Paper consultation procedure asks the public to "think the unthinkable" on alternatives to the car, but the closer they come to fruition, the more they will run into the obstacle of a political backlash from car-owning voters.

This is mainly because people instinctively resist being forced to do things they do not want to do and the proposed measures smack of enforcement rather than encouragement.

As a result the trigger is set for the thus-far passive car-owning millions to mobilise into a powerful political lobby that could well obstruct measures to deal with the problem of urban congestion.

It is therefore vital, as this consultation procedure gets under way, that more of existing taxation on car use, and all of any new taxation, can be seen to be pledged to building public transport systems that people will prefer to use.

We cannot depend on the patchwork of varying-quality public transport that is at present the largely-rejected alternative to going by car.

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