Greater wealth has translated into more and longer journeys by car and lorry But that

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Greater wealth has translated into more, and longer, journeys by car and lorry But that relationship has begun to change. The DTLR's annual report will clearly illustrate that the connection between Gross Domestic Product and traffic is beginning to alter radically. One of its graphs shows a steep rise in GDP between 1990 and 2001, but the rising curve in road traffic tails off sharply in 1999, producing a widening gap between growth in the nation's wealth and the growth in road traffic by 2001. That tells its own story: our transport policies are beginning to work.Since this government took office, unemployment has dropped to the lowest level for a generation A million more people are travelling to work every day That amounts to two million more journeys every day. Yet even with our strong economy, road traffic over the past five years has grown at less than 1 per cent a year.This trend is confirmed by the Commission for Integrated Transport, which found that the number of individual journeys a year by car had fallen from 646 in 1997 to 631 in 2000.

For the first time in a generation we have halted the decline in public transport That is why we are investing in transport. The 10-year plan provides the biggest boost in living memory – in financial terms, more than Â£181bn.Where people have an attractive public transport alternative, they use it. In Oxford, for example, bus use has gone up 50 per cent, while car traffic has not increased. Light rail journeys grew by 27 per cent in 2000-01, compared with 1999-2000. There are new schemes, either already open or to open soon, in Sunderland, Nottingham, Manchester, Leeds, south Hampshire and the Docklands.In Manchester, there are now three million less car journeys a year, thanks to the Metrolink super-tram.

In Birmingham, a million people a year are leaving their cars at home to use the Midland Metro. A similar story can be told in places such as Leeds, Croydon and more than 100 towns with quality bus partnerships. As in mainland Europe, where people own more cars per head but use them less, there is a high-quality public transport alternative due to long-term investment. That is what our 10-year plan sets out to do.The answer to reducing transport congestion is to increase capital investment, rather than rely on revenue subsidies: it is this that has contributed to the current massive disinvestment.

And this government is determined to tackle the negative effects of traffic – that is, congestion and pollution. It is doing that by giving local authorities new powers to reduce traffic build-up. I look forward, with my new responsibilities [for local government and the regions], to working with the Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling, and local authorities to ensure our transport plans play their full part.We are equally determined to introduce cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles that will reduce emissions by half. We must, too, concentrate on traffic pollution and the quality of the air we breathe. In 1998, I was joined by Leon Valero, a seven-year-old asthmatic, to launch a Â£2m advertising campaign to raise awareness of air pollution and climate change.