OH DEAR, Mr Jordan – you are wonderfully naïve.

I totally agree about traffic light queues, particularly Archers and Winchester Road's, but you ask the question, why?

Here’s why – because the car-hating, bike-loving, pedestrian-priority zealots want you to queue.

How else do to explain totally bizarre lights timings, removing bus pull-ins and left-hand filter lanes (or those remaining controlled separately by a pointless traffic light)?

Add to this massive junctions with forests of double-duplicated traffic light stalks, or silly cycle lanes just to meet some EU quota – have you seen the latest farce at the bottom of Paynes Road?

Or what about this city constantly topping both the slowest journey times and the highest pollution levels?

Of course making driving so slow, frustrating and expensive, you will give it up and use bus, train, bike or Shank’s pony instead.

Except of course that doesn’t work and never will. For a start, one bus might replace just three cars, but it also takes up as much room as 3 cars and goes slower so the queue remains.

And talking of EU quotas, what about the 'green' one? They are prepared to sacrifice this just to make driving so intolerably slow you will continue to pump tons of greenhouse gases going nowhere.

Not to mention that their cherished buses also spew even more lethal emissions.

Could you and I solve this city’s traffic problems? No.

Could we do a better job though? You betcha!

Phil Woodward, Millbrook

Editor's note: There are no EU quotas on the number of cycle lanes a city must have.