COMBINE the letters ‘Congested road needs a bypass’ and ‘Town is hit by child poverty', (The Bolton News, January 27), and we get the perfect ammunition to ‘blow Tory policy out of the water’.

In the first instance, it’s scientific fact that, we can’t build our way out of congestion.

Do we want to live as densely packed as they do in the likes of Bangladesh, and have even more children living in poverty?

In Norway, 55 per cent of daily trips and 72 per cent of holiday and leisure trips were made by cars in 2013/14, registering a significant increase compared to 2009.

To control car-use, it now calls for the halt of expanding motorways and road capacity.

In the degrowth context, not only have cars been stopped from expanding, the environmentally harmful transportation infrastructures are shrunk and replaced by environmentally friendly elements such as cycling infrastructure, walkable neighbourhoods, and better public transport services.

In California, where they’ve suffered both flooding and forest fires due to climate change, the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008 (Senate Bill 375) requires jurisdictions to identify changes to policies and systems to reduce mobile source greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

To build a bypass, how many homes and businesses would have to be demolished?

When people are on benefit or unemployed, they have to learn to live within strict financial limits, and their children often end up malnourished.

Accordingly, people who have cars should also learn to live within limits, such as get out of bed earlier, and stop breaking speed limits, ie abusing and intimidating law abiding drivers and vulnerable road users, to make up for lost time.

Could Bolton flood like Paris?

Maybe not, but still, we need to work together to find better and fairer solutions to congestion.

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