"Dave Arquati" wrote in message
...

I could be wrong - for all I know, loads of motorists want a train
alternative from Sutton to Enfield or Dartford to St Albans!

Well, I live in St Albans and have been to gigs at the Mick
Jagger Centre in Dartford :-)

Seriously, though, I don't think that building more roads or
railways is the answer. Having spent much of the past two
years commuting between St A and places like Camberley or
Basingstoke, the question that always comes to mind when
sitting in 8 lanes of stationary traffic on the M25 is "How many
of these journeys are really necessary?"

Mine certainly weren't - with a decent IT infrastructure and a
different attitude on the part of my employers, I could have
done much of my work from home or from somewhere local,
being much more productive and less polluting.

Ideally I'd like the Government to set aside the money it would
waste on widening the M25, and use it instead as a carrot to
encourage employers to change their working practices - maybe
even subsidising the installation of broadband, video-conferencing,
etc - to cut down on unnecessary travelling.

Since that isn't going to happen, the sooner they introduce
road charging, the better. That might make employers
reconsider the wisdom of having a large number of
employees travelling around every day.
--
Garry Smith