John Prescott: You can't drive motorists off the road. You can drive them to their senses

In this newspaper's leading article "Beware, Mr Darling, of the backseat driver in No 10" last week, a statement was attributed to me, made in 1997: "I will have failed if in five years' time there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car."

I did not say that. And rather like the alleged Jim Callaghan words "crisis, what crisis?", wide reporting of them does not make them true. I have, however, constantly said that our transport policies are designed to get people to use public transport more and their cars less. It is true – as the former Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions' (DTLR) annual report published tomorrow will confirm, and your editorial conceded – that the number of journeys on public transport has risen as a result of increased investment in buses and trains.

Even Friends of the Earth admitted that rail journeys had risen by 25 per cent and light rail journeys by 36 per cent. Indeed, the decline in bus use has also been reversed. In each of the past two years, the number of bus journeys rose by 1 per cent. This amounted to an extra 29 million journeys in 2000-01.

The issue is not really about whether I made those comments, but whether individuals are using public transport more and their cars less. So let me set the record straight. I have never believed that the amount of traffic could be reduced in absolute terms within five years. That was why there was no national target for reducing car journeys in the 1997 Labour manifesto, in the Government's 1998 roads review, or in our 10-year plan. It is why I stated four years ago in a speech to the Local Government Association: "There will certainly be more cars in future. But we must use them more wisely." It is also the reason for my not supporting the Liberal Democrats' and Welsh Nationalists' Private Members' Road Traffic Reduction (National Targets) Bill – with its central requirement "to set and publish ... national targets for road traffic reduction". I opposed this clause. It was removed and the Bill became an Act. But it still failed to silence the myth-makers.

So what, then, are the facts? The ratio of motor traffic growth has historically been closely linked with economic growth. For years, it has been an almost iron rule in all industrialised countries that traffic growth goes hand- in-hand with a strong economy. We saw this in 1989, during the last upturn, when traffic growth peaked at 8 per cent. Greater wealth has translated into more, and longer, journeys by car and lorry. But that relationship has begun to change. The DTLR's annual report will clearly illustrate that the connection between Gross Domestic Product and traffic is beginning to alter radically. One of its graphs shows a steep rise in GDP between 1990 and 2001, but the rising curve in road traffic tails off sharply in 1999, producing a widening gap between growth in the nation's wealth and the growth in road traffic by 2001. That tells its own story: our transport policies are beginning to work.

Since this government took office, unemployment has dropped to the lowest level for a generation. A million more people are travelling to work every day. That amounts to two million more journeys every day. Yet even with our strong economy, road traffic over the past five years has grown at less than 1 per cent a year.

This trend is confirmed by the Commission for Integrated Transport, which found that the number of individual journeys a year by car had fallen from 646 in 1997 to 631 in 2000. For the first time in a generation we have halted the decline in public transport. That is why we are investing in transport. The 10-year plan provides the biggest boost in living memory – in financial terms, more than £181bn.

Where people have an attractive public transport alternative, they use it. In Oxford, for example, bus use has gone up 50 per cent, while car traffic has not increased. Light rail journeys grew by 27 per cent in 2000-01, compared with 1999-2000. There are new schemes, either already open or to open soon, in Sunderland, Nottingham, Manchester, Leeds, south Hampshire and the Docklands.

In Manchester, there are now three million less car journeys a year, thanks to the Metrolink super-tram. In Birmingham, a million people a year are leaving their cars at home to use the Midland Metro. A similar story can be told in places such as Leeds, Croydon and more than 100 towns with quality bus partnerships. As in mainland Europe, where people own more cars per head but use them less, there is a high-quality public transport alternative due to long-term investment. That is what our 10-year plan sets out to do.

The answer to reducing transport congestion is to increase capital investment, rather than rely on revenue subsidies: it is this that has contributed to the current massive disinvestment. And this government is determined to tackle the negative effects of traffic – that is, congestion and pollution. It is doing that by giving local authorities new powers to reduce traffic build-up. I look forward, with my new responsibilities [for local government and the regions], to working with the Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling, and local authorities to ensure our transport plans play their full part.

We are equally determined to introduce cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles that will reduce emissions by half. We must, too, concentrate on traffic pollution and the quality of the air we breathe. In 1998, I was joined by Leon Valero, a seven-year-old asthmatic, to launch a £2m advertising campaign to raise awareness of air pollution and climate change. Air pollution worsens the condition of those who are already ill, and every year it contributes to tens of thousands of hospital admissions and premature deaths.

I wholeheartedly offer my support to The Independent on Sunday's asthma campaign to cut down the amount of air pollution from traffic. Motor vehicles account for up to 75 per cent of emissions of nitrogen dioxide and are a major source of fine particles. Nitrogen dioxide is thought to have both an acute and chronic effect on airways and lung function, particularly for asthmatics. The Integrated Transport Policy published in 1998, along with the National Air Quality Strategy, plays a key role in helping to achieve air quality targets.

Changing the travelling habits of a generation and encouraging people to use their cars less and public transport more is a long haul. Tackling the problems of our transport system after years of decline and underinvestment was never going to be easy. It requires nothing less than long-term investment. It also needs someone who can take the long-term view as well as the courage to see it through. I have no doubt that that person is Alistair Darling.