It is good to see an official study into transport which doesn't brand all motorists as evil and doesn't portray some Utopia in which people are so deeply in love with public transport that they can't bear to sit in isolation in their cars.

The South and West Yorkshire transport study acknowledges that new lanes may need to be added to the M1 and M62 to ease congestion. It also recognises that public transport can never solve the problems of congestion on its own.

Life has changed and too many people are now forced to commute long distances via complicated and difficult journeys in order to find jobs best suited to their abilities.

When Norman Tebbit famously told the unemployed to "Get on your bikes" to find work, what he really meant was that workers needed to be flexible if the jobless figure was ever to be genuinely reduced. We're now reaping the effects of that change, as is the rest of Europe.

The days of whole communities rolling out of bed and into the mill next door are long gone and public transport is unable to meet the intricacies of modern travel-to-work patterns. Having acknowledged that reality, however, it is bizarre of project director Denvil Coombes to suggest that in future people will have to be encouraged to change jobs or move closer to work to solve congestion problems. Life is too complicated for that ever to happen.

It seems inevitable, though, that road tolls on motorways and other congested routes will be with us before too long. However, there are still many who believe that the Government wouldn't need to raise extra cash if even half the revenue it acquires from the Road Fund Licence and company-car taxation was actually spent on maintaining, improving and expanding the roads network.