Leading article: Take a new route with the old car problem

What are the big social changes for which this government will be remembered? As we gaze out from the 18th floor of the Canary Wharf tower, our view of the future is hazy - it is the smog, of course. This week the Government issued its first air-quality alert of the year, and Glenda Jackson, a minister in the new merged Environment and Transport department, urged us to kick our car habit. She was only urging, of course, not announcing action. She wants to "raise awareness" of the problems caused by the growth of car traffic. When we hear politicians talking about raising awareness, we know it means they want to do something unpopular but need to soften up public opinion first.

We live not just in a car economy but a car society and a car culture, a process which seems to have reached a state of saturation but actually has much further to go yet. However, after two decades of intensive motorisation, we have arrived at a junction and have a choice of routes. During 18 years of government by the Car Party, the number of private metal wheeled boxes in Britain rose from 15 million to 25 million. Over the next 10 years, the number is officially forecast to exceed 30 million, and each one is likely to be used more, so that the total amount of traffic on the roads is expected to increase by between 55 per cent and 87 per cent by 2025.

That route ought to be marked with one of those quaint American roadsigns: "Wrong Way". But it is the way we are going if all we are going to do is "raise awareness". That way, the problem of what Ms Jackson called car-dependency will be solved by congestion. Existing road space will be used more efficiently, as people stagger their journey times, get better and better black boxes on their dashboards to tell them how to dodge jams and the technology of traffic management becomes more sophisticated. These things are desirable in any case, but they are not enough.

There is another route into the future, marked "Predict and Provide", which has been coned off. The last government effectively stopped building new roads. There are a few projects whose future is now in doubt, such as more lanes on the M25, but essentially all the increase in future traffic will have to be accommodated on the roads we have already got.

This leaves the Third Way, the famous escape route taken by politicians, especially Tony Blair, student revolutionaries and leader-writers. This means relying on more than national gridlock to halt and reverse many of the trends of modern life. More people are travelling longer distances to work by car; people are using their cars more for shopping, school runs and entertainment; and more and more freight is carried by road.

Some of the necessary decisions were taken by the Conservatives. Planning permission for out-of-town shopping and leisure complexes should be almost impossible to get in future. And the tax on petrol will go on rising by 5 per cent more than inflation every year. So far this has not had a noticeable effect on car use, but eventually it must encourage us to buy cars with smaller engines. This leads to the paradox of the green car salesperson. It might be thought that one of Ms Jackson's first priorities was to stop Loughborough University running its new degree course in car salesmanship. But no: selling new cars can be good for the environment. Sure, they use a lot of energy to make, but their emissions standards are higher. This could be a useful insight for a pro-business Labour government wanting to do the right thing.

The other route that we cannot take, as we pause at our hypothetical crossroads, is to turn round and go back the way we came. The liberating joys (however double-edged) of car ownership should be spread as widely as possible - for the many, not the few. The focus of public policy has to be on minimising the amount of time we spend in our cars getting in each other's way. We cannot go back to the time when Toad happily poop- pooped his way around the country extolling the joys of the open road. Road space (and parking space) are finite goods which should be priced to ensure their efficient allocation - although there is a role for the state in ensuring a socially just allocation, too. The Government should press ahead urgently with experiments in charging people to use the most congested bits of road. But this is an area where there needs to be a direct link between carrot and stick, and so the funds raised should go into clearing the roads for frequent buses, and into local light rail services as well as the national railway system.

Beginning to roll back the car culture is not the first social change with which we would expect to associate New Labour. Mr Blair is, after all, a "modern man", product of the Beatles, colour television and (more recently) the Sierra, Mondeo and Galaxy. But there is a consensus, grudgingly acknowledged by the Toad in all of us, that something must be done. And when Mr Blair sees a consensus, he is capable of acting fast. Will he be tough on the causes of smog?