IF YOU visit Salisbury or Winchester you’ll find thriving town centres where shops and restaurants will be booming again once lock down is lifted.

What have they got that we haven’t? How about park and rides as well as cycle routes throughout both.

They don’t have councils rattling a begging bowl to central government trying to scrounge a few hundred thousand here and there, because they’ve got transport sorted.

BCP being in the top five places in the country for traffic congestion is driving away jobs and investment, poisoning unborn children through air pollution and keeping thousands under permanent lockdown through heart conditions and asthma.

Those numbers shoot up even higher during high pollution days and weeks that come every year in the spring and summer.

You can track them on the DEFRA pollution forecast. Another tragedy over ongoing failure to tackle our traffic congestion is alzheimer’s blighting old age, now linked closely to being exposed to traffic noise.

Cars have been helpful in the past, but our ongoing relationship with them has now turned sour, and public transport and bikes must be taken seriously.

Susan Stockwell

Poole