Certainly, drastic changes are needed in the way we travel, yet the evidence is that up to a third of motorists will voluntarily switch to walking or cycling if local authorities make walking and cycling safe and attractive.

Such a change, combined with much more bus priority, would dramatically reduce congestion and this is turn would allow bus companies to greatly upgrade their ability to attract many more motorists out of cars.

As oil prices rose, trains and buses could be converted to use electricity which could be produced by carbon free nuclear power stations.

The problem is that many of the transport planning bodies yearn for grandiose airport and road schemes along with increased control over our lives.

We need people-centred policies which improve road safety for cyclists and pedestrians. We need to seek market-driven solutions for the bigger investments like better bus networks, rail electrification, trolleybuses and trams.

People need healthy, safe and relaxing transport instead of the stressful, sedentary and congested modes currently on offer. While it cannot be denied that big changes and big investment is needed, most local authorities deter people from making the switch and deter investment by the big transport companies by failing to make relatively modest investments in bus priority and safer streets.

The car should also be part of our sustainable future but as our servant instead of our master.


Does this air gateway give right impression?


From: S Franks, Chapel Allerton, Leeds.

THE Glasgow Airport terrorist attack was on
June 30 last year, and stringent new safety measures were introduced immediately to prevent any future would-be suicide bombers driving explosive-laden vehicles into airport terminal buildings.

No sensible person begrudges that, even if it has added one more layer of inconvenience to the already many inconveniences suffered by those who fly, but I think passengers are entitled to assume that airport operators would do their best to make them as bearable as possible.

Not so the operator of Leeds Bradford Airport. Ten months after the Glasgow Airport attack, and users of this airport must drag their cases over an undulating and difficult course (across two roads) to the terminal building. The "departures" entrance is so well disguised, most will end up walking even further than necessary to what turns out to be where the arrivals emerge.

Those arrivals who are to be met by friends or relatives have to make the same unpleasant trip – and many, let's remember, will be at the end of a very long and probably tiresome day – and wait on the car park for their lift to arrive.

Let's hope traffic didn't hold it up, because if it is raining or snowing or blowing a gale – and the airport is notoriously exposed – they must wait there in the wet and cold. If first-time visitors get the impression they have arrived at a tin-pot little airport somewhere in the backwoods, should anyone be surprised?

Is this really the impression the international gateway to Leeds, Bradford and West Yorkshire should be giving visitors?

And how petty is it that this airport requires passengers to buy the transparent bags needed to put cosmetics in? At Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, the bags are freely available at any number of points throughout the terminal.

If there's an airport whose operator had a policy of squeezing as much as possible out of airline passengers while treating them like cattle, would Leeds Bradford be very different?


Children deprived of vital days in their education


From: Alan Chapman, Beck Lane, Bingley.

LAST week, a Bradford father was jailed for 12 weeks and his wife for eight weeks due to allowing their four children to play truant from their regular schools, for the better part of seven months.

Taken together, these children will have missed over 500 days schooling.

Also last week, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) called a one-day strike closing nearly 8,000 schools and an estimated 30 per cent of all school children in England and Wales missed one day's lessons. This
equates to thousands of school days lost.

If parents have to face jail for hundreds of lost school days, then shouldn't the officers and strike leaders of the NUT be rounded up and also be sent
to prison.

Their total crime against school children far surpasses that of the two Bradford parents.

I think we can safely wager that no action will be taken against the union members, especially by the New Labour government.

Would this have happened under Margaret Thatcher?