Regular users of the district’s creaking roads network should not be the only ones dismayed by news that money for major highway improvement schemes could dry up.

The very prosperity of the city and district, its ability to thrive and compete with other centres, is dependent on it having an effective integrated transport system, of which roads are a major part.

If nothing is done to tackle traffic bottlenecks, then Bradford’s development risks being strangled by snarl-ups.

Our past is littered with missed opportunities which could have given us much better transport system than our current one – an incomplete ring-road, no through rail route, a lack of dual carriageways into the city and unfinished links to the motorway network are stark reminders of that failure. Surely this has taught us how costly inaction can be?

Improvements, however, require funding, and for years Yorkshire has not been given its fair share compared to other areas, especially in the South.

Our local representatives should be doing all they can to make the Government address this appalling state of affairs, especially when the purse strings finally loosen again.

The Council, meanwhile, is right to look at other ways to ease congestion on our roads.

Reducing the number of school runs by making sure children attend a good local school rather than a super-sized one further from their homes is one example of how this could be done.

With half-term upon us, and a drop in morning traffic of around 20 per cent, we can see what a huge difference this could make.