According to government projections, a further 5.7m cars will be on British roads over the next 20 years, increasing the overall traffic load by 30%. Stephen Joseph, executive director of the Campaign for Better Transport, said: "We can't go on like this. Traffic is destroying our communities, our health and our environment. The government must stop catering for all this traffic and instead give people and businesses good alternatives to driving."

Motorists' groups have warned that any policy to limit driving or make it more expensive would be politically dangerous. Road pricing, as a policy to curb vehicle use, has suffered a public backlash before its introduction in the UK. Nearly 2 million people signed an online petition calling for pay-as-you-drive schemes to be dropped.

The Campaign for Better Transport, formerly known as Transport 2000, said the government should push ahead with road pricing and implement a nationwide scheme tackling carbon dioxide emissions as well as congestion.

A study by the Department for Transport predicts that car ownership will rise to 33.5m by 2031, up from the present UK level of 27.8m. That would be enough cars, according to Mr Joseph, to fill a 52-lane motorway from London to Edinburgh.

The campaign group also published a list of Britain's top 10 traffic "hotspots" where traffic has grown fastest over the past decade. Top of this table are the Manchester boroughs of Tameside and Oldham.

The RAC Foundation, said Mr Joseph, was ignoring the fact that nearly four-fifths of the total distance travelled in the UK was by car.

The DfT defended its record of investment in public transport, which it said was at record levels, with £2.5bn being spent on buses this year and £88m per week being invested in the rail network.  However, the government's recent rail white paper has outlined a significant reduction in state subsidy of the railways, while farepayers are expected to nearly double their contribution to the cost of running trains.