COLUMNIST Pete Magill asks why he’s sitting in gridlocked traffic, Guardian, December 5, and goes on to express a hope that a link will be built between Brian Bevan Island and Bank Quay. With all due respect, the solution to congestion is known, and it’s certainly not in adding links to the road network. When you add capacity more people take to their cars and fill that capacity.

Warrington transport planners know that, don’t let them waste huge sums in taking us down the tinkering-with-the-roads route.

There is nothing much wrong with the Warrington road network; the problem is too many people using it at once, in motors. The solution comes when you consider what we need to do, which is typically to go to work and back, which could be done in a number of ways and not just by car. The solution is to reduce the number of cars on the road at once, by making long travel unnecessary by putting all available resources into promoting alternatives to the car and by making car travel even less attractive.

Unpleasant, but there’s no alternative if we want to see a better future for our community.

And it’s a long road back. We’ve taken decades to get ourselves in this mess. Our current transport provision needs intervention to re-balance the proportion of people travelling by the different modes, so that we see more people using public transport, walking and cycling. You can’t re-balance something by adding to both sides.

We need a council with responsible town and transport planning departments with vision to move away from the current un-sustainable, destructive, disorganisation. The future could be better than today and the town’s economy, wellbeing, and sense of community would all benefit.

Jon Wood Stockton Heath