Girl Friday: Superhero will sort out Bristol traffic

If there were a Bristol comic strip about life in our city, the villain of the piece wouldn't be a mysterious man swathed in darkness with a blood-curdling laugh – because, as we all know, in Bristol cars are the enemy.

Yes, filthy, dirty cars belching noxious fumes are to blame for all Bristol's ills, we're told. But try telling that to their morbidly obese drivers and their lazy offspring slumped in the back seat, their greedy fingers clutching a half-eaten Big Mac as if it were made of 24-carat gold.

These deluded fools need saving from themselves by a superhero dressed head to toe in a stretchy Lycra all-in-one clingy number in a bright shade of – what else – green, right?

Wrong. It ain't that simple.

I agree that Bristol's transport system desperately needs sorting out. And I'm glad Bristol City Council has finally advertised the transport service director's vacancy externally, enabling people who don't already work for our city council to apply for the first time. Because, let's face it, we need fresh eyes on this problem, a new perspective and original ideas from someone who perhaps has already successfully sorted out another city's transport system.

But please, council, I beg you, don't choose some lentil-chomping, head-in-the-clouds environmentalist who has no idea what it's like to live in the real world.

We want workable, long-term solutions that benefit everybody, not just the middle-class green cyclist brigade.

For example, "two-plus" lanes in which you can only drive between certain hours of the day if you have two or more people in the car sound great in theory as a congestion-cutting measure. But in practice, they don't work. These lanes are hardly used, except illegally. All they do is waste a whole lane and squeeze the other drivers into a smaller space, making their journey longer and releasing more exhaust fumes into the atmosphere. So scrap them and move on.

Remember, us drivers are council taxpayers too, and – unlike cyclists – we pay to travel on the roads. Don't we have rights?

Now, before all you tree-hugging greens get your Fairtrade hemp knickers in a twist, many able-bodied drivers like myself would gladly leave their cars at home more often if we were presented with clean, efficient, affordable, convenient public transport. And I, as I'm sure do many others drivers, sincerely hope that this new "transport supremo" makes that happen.

But until then, don't demonize drivers. We're not the villains. And while you're busy berating us, the real villains are getting away with it.

Were the great and the good who were running Bristol at the time looking the other way while cities like Manchester were putting in a tram system which to this day takes thousands of cars off the road on a daily basis? Why haven't Bristol's transport problems been sorted out well before now? Why are there so many unnecessary traffic lights, interrupting smooth traffic flow? And why so many speed limit changes? (Actually, we know the answer to that last one – it's a money-making scheme courtesy of speed cameras.)

And why is travelling on our buses and trains daylight robbery? I hope Dawn Primarolo and Kerry McCarthy succeed in their mission for an Integrated Transport Authority to exert more control over First to reduce fares.

While congestion charging and pedestrianising the city centre are on the table, consider another point. Nobody is going to coax me out of my car during the autumn and winter months when it gets dark early unless I have a safe alternative. And if you've ever stood alone in the dark waiting ages for a bus that was either very late or would fail to turn up at all and felt unsafe and anxious, you'll understand why.

So good luck, incoming transport supremo. You'll need it. But do yourself a favour. Ask Bristol's citizens – all of us – what the problems are and how we'd solve them.

It's about time somebody listened.