Sir, - Frank McDonald is so depressingly right about roads (Opinion, December 22nd). He is as right as those who argued precisely the same case against London's M25 at least a decade ago. Now that monster has grown to 14 lanes of congestion. He is as right as the radical voices who argued in 1980s Britain that new roads simply generate new traffic. They were ignored by Thatcher's great car society, but now their arguments are promulgated by the UK government.
Are policy-makers in Ireland, North and South, too proud to learn from the grim mistakes of their neighbours? In Northern Ireland our civil servants appropriated the lion's share of Gordon Brown's peace bonus to build the roads they had only been able to dream of. All the policy documents, however, tell us that public transport must take priority - after just a bit more road-building.
Of course the time will come, in about ten years, when policy-makers in Ireland will concur with the received wisdom of a previous millennium that building more roads is not only futile and counter-productive but a gross waste of public money. By that time Dublin and Belfast will be boxed in tarmac and caught in a gridlock of expensive, steel, personal space. - Yours, etc., John Woods,
The Esplanade, Holywood, Co Down.