Bradford has a good case to make to the Department of Transport for substantial funding to help the district to bring its transport network up to date. Hopefully it will be nodded through by the Council's ruling executive at its meeting tomorrow and then be approved by the full Council later this month so it can be submitted to the Government by the end of July.

This bid to bring in almost £100 million over five years in improvement grants is very important to the future prosperity of the district. As the executive member for the environment, Councillor Anne Hawkesworth, points out, Bradford has antiquated roads laid out in Victorian times and with junctions that need to be brought up to 21st century standards.

Road transport across Bradford is, in fact, its Achilles heel. It needs to be sorted out if the district is to make the most of the considerable opportunities presented by the large-scale redevelopment of the city centre and the growth in prosperity promised by plans for the Airedale corridor.

The transport needs of those two projects, plus improvements to the western outer ring road to reduce the amount of traffic passing through the city centre, deserve the high priority given to them in this draft version of the West Yorkshire Local Transport Plan.

It is right, too, that the draft plan acknowledges that road schemes alone, however substantial they might be, will not be enough to meet the needs of a growing population. Public transport, too, needs to be improved in terms of reliability and comfort if people are to be wooed out of their cars and on to the buses and trains.