It would be foolish to suggest that our love affair with the car is over. But could it be that we have finally been cured of our addiction to cramming more miles into each day? The link between traffic and economic growth has been breaking down for a decade. Now we appear to have reached a tipping point: for the first time in 35 years traffic is falling sharply.

For more than a century the time the average person has spent travelling has remained fixed at about an hour a day. All that has changed is our ability to travel farther in that hour.

Since 1950 the average daily distance travelled has increased fivefold. Car ownership is the key factor behind this explosion in mobility. In 1949 bicycles and cars travelled roughly the same total distance. Last year cars travelled 100 times farther than bicycles. In the past 60 years the proportion of households with a car has risen from 12 per cent to 76 per cent. The number of licensed cars has grown from 2 million to 27 million.

Yet about a decade ago, economists noticed that the economy began growing faster than the distance travelled. Overall traffic continued to grow but most of the increase was in van mileage, with only small rises in car travel.

The cost of new cars has fallen in recent years but rising congestion has dampened our willingness to get behind the wheel. We have hit that one-hour barrier and, rather than spend even more time on the road, sought alternatives such as moving closer to work or school.

With the Government planning to widen 500 miles of motorway in the next decade, more of us will be able to go farther in our daily hour. Once the recession is over, traffic volume is likely to resume its relentless upward march. Only some artificial constraint, such as high fuel prices or an end to road expansion, is likely to arrest it.

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