Transport

I remain convinced that at least part of the solution to the United Kingdom's growing traffic problems is not more attempts to pursuade motorists to abandon their cars by punitive measures, but the use of networking technology.

It seems that those in charge of transport policy have become fixated on solving the problem by using the resources that their departments can influence. No one seems currently capable of looking outside of their realm for a solution.

Anyone who has worked in change management will know how difficult it is to change people's habits. Experienced change management practitioners know that you rarely achieve what you are trying to by using a stick, however big! But this is exactly what our transport policy chiefs are trying to do... It won't work and we are wasting huge sums of tax payers money on folly. We should wake up and smell the coffee and look for alternatives where drivers want to give up out of their own volition rather than external pressure.

I think there is considerable merit in using technology to remove the need to make monotonous journeys, which no one really enjoys. We have the capability to allow many people to work from home, eliminating an enormous amount of travel. We spend so much of our time commuting and we know it could be spent in much more productive ways - with friends, family and others.

The solution is much more complex than just, perhaps, giving tax breaks to both businesses and their employees to work from home using broadband networking. People have strong emotional bonds with those in their working environment because, since the Industrial Revolution, our society has been moving those bonds from the local community to the workplace. We need to start reversing those trends, in my opinion, to save the planet from pollution!

We need to make it desirable to live in small communities to reduce the need for so much unnecessary travel.