THE Adver's latest expose of our Park and Ride network comes little more than a week after the council was criticised for the use of a transport plan budget surplus for building cycle paths. This surplus of £1.25m resulted from the postponement of a park and ride scheme at Commonhead.

Some people have said the money should go to our overstretched, under-resourced education or social services departments.

I'm afraid it isn't that simple. Money for the Local Transport Plan is granted by the Government and must be used for transport. I doubt whether it would be in the council's power to transfer it, however deserving the cause.

I was interested to read that the Copse park and ride is taking 5,500 cars per month out of Swindon town centre. This doesn't look so impressive when you realise that this is only about 200 a day. In a town which measures peak traffic flow in hundreds of vehicles an hour, this is small beer indeed.

Or, to put it another way, each of the Copse site's 488 parking spaces is used, on average, less than once every two days.

Spending £1.25m on cycle paths will fund several schemes over a wide area of Swindon. We are actually getting better value for it than if it had been spent on the original proposal for the Commonhead park and tide scheme, which would only have benefited a few motorists from out of town and done nothing for the problem of car use for short cross town journeys. Just think what could have been achieved if the Copse and Croft park and ride projects had fallen through as well.

SIMON HARTLEY

Cranmore Avenue

Swindon