PETER Johnston, in his letter “Why motorists should pay” (December 3), is being mischievously misleading by blaming the people who commute to work by car for the current problems with traffic congestion and the inadequacies with public transport.

The reasons why there are more cars on the roads during peak periods are directly as a result of there being an inadequate public transport service in Greater Manchester.

Also, the potty road re-engineering schemes that we needlessly see carried out by local councils don’t help matters either; all they do is create more congestion than need be.

For decades now, people have been faced with very unreliable, expensive, crowded, dirty and for many passengers — women in particular — an unsafe public transport system.

This is wholly unacceptable in a so-called modern industrialised western democracy.

For most people, the only safe and reliable means of transport available is the transport they provide for themselves, out of their own pockets. This is on top of the taxes they have already paid, which are supposed to go towards providing adequate public transport.

For politicians to now turn around and say “It’s your fault that we are now in the mess we’re in” and that “you’ve now got to pay more taxes — under the guise of congestion charges — to fix the ‘cock ups’ we keep on making,” is absolutely disgraceful.

Politicians have consistently failed to listen to the people they purport to represent and address the problems with public transport.

Instead, they continue to squander billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on their own pet projects and loopy ideas. It’s disgusting.

Politicians — past and present — should go and hang their heads in shame.

Stuart A Chapman, Patterdale Road, Harwood