JUDGING by the stream of letters and the telephone calls I have received, my recent article on the Government's proposals for a national system of road pricing has provoked many varied responses.

These range from the generally supportive, provided public transport can be improved, to antagonistic on the grounds that motorists already pay far more in taxes then they receive back in the form of road maintenance and new road provision.

The purpose of the article was to describe how we might expect to pay for using roads in say 15 years time.

Road pricing on a national scale is not a big stick for bashing motorists - it is a fair and equitable means of ensuring that those who use the road system most and those who use the system where it is most congested, should pay accordingly.

As my article clearly stated, road pricing is a way of addressing the present problem of `market failure' whereby the price that is paid by those using roads is not a true indicator of the cost to the community.

The private car is an essential part of our lives. I, like all car owners, appreciate the convenience and flexibility that cars provide.

A car is more than just a means of transport - it is a shopping basket, a baby carriage and so on as well as a way of getting to work or going about our personal business.

Road pricing will not change the fundamental way in which we use our cars. What it is expected to do though is make us think twice about whether we really do need to use the car all of the time for all of the journeys we currently make.

It is a realistic way of reducing road congestion in the future.

Gavin Macpheason made a fundamental point in his letter to the Examiner when he stated that he would support road pricing "only if it sets in progress a massive improvement in public transport".

Few transport professionals and probably a large proportion of level-headed motorists would disagree.

The problem is - will this ever happen? I doubt it, given the outcome of the deregulation of local transport services the best part of 20 years ago.

Deregulation, along with privatisation, was designed to open up local transport markets to competition.

The outcome was believed to be a situation whereby local firms would provide new, competitive services which met the needs of their local markets. Through a contestable market situation, fares would be kept at a reasonable level and passengers would be better served. A laudable principle! But like many theories, it has not worked out as was expected.

Instead, we have a situation whereby competition in local markets is restricted and where the typical bus operators are now huge multi-million pound businesses with an obligation to their shareholders to make a decent return on their investments.

Any talk of returning public transport to public ownership though is not on. The Thatcher legislation more or less saw to this. A major improvement for the future can only come from the private sector, albeit with some sort of financial support from the Government.

This support could possibly be linked to a form of franchising as has happened very successfully in London, where the number of buses and numbers travelling on them has steadily increased at a time of continuous decline elsewhere.

Revenue from the congestion charge has had a major part to play in this exceptional case.

For longer journeys, rail can and does provide a very attractive alternative to the private car. In recent years, the number of journeys made nationally by rail has increased quite dramatically to the extent that rail has almost become a victim of its own success.

Local commuters to Leeds for example, do not need reminding of overcrowded trains and platforms reminiscent of scenes from the epic film Dr Zhivago.

Although commuters may not always appreciate it, the West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Authority provides them with heavily subsidised Metrotrain services, pouring in five times as much per year into local rail services than into local bus services.

Whether this is the best use of resources going into local transport is a matter of debate.

For a small proportion of the community, walking and even cycling could provide a realistic alternative to using cars. Getting more children to walk, preferably accompanied, to school would have an immediate impact on aiding the flow of term time morning traffic. (Half term weeks and holiday weeks are noticeably quieter on our roads).

For a few hardy souls, cycling is feasible. But for the vast majority of us, these may not be particularly realistic or practical possibilities.

Over the next few years, in the absence of a radical new transport policy, it is difficult to see a massive improvement in the quality of public transport services in West Yorkshire and in the country as a whole. Marginal improvements, continuing recent trends, seem the most likely case scenario.

So, for the thousands of motorists battling to get to work each day in West Yorkshire, a national system of road pricing cannot come a day too soon.