Letter: RIP: the short life of the car

IT WAS a relief to read your leader ('Well, do we all want cars or not?', 8 August) as it voiced my feelings exactly.

The car is an expensive, destructive, polluting, outmoded and finite form of transport which uses a finite fuel and requires more and more of our finite countryside and urban space in which to be driven and parked. In the next century we will have to develop alternative forms of transport. It is the duty of the Government to consider our long-term future, and it should be committing public funds to a future without the individual motor car.

The car and its industry have come to dominate our existence. We have allowed a form of transport to ruin our towns, carve up our countryside, control shopping habits, and do untold damage to our atmosphere and public health. Like it or not, sooner or later we are going to have to do without it. We should start now, and the Government should be leading the way, not burying its head in the tarmac.

Sue Bonney

West Byfleet, Surrey