Look at any old picture of Brighton and you will probably be struck by the absence of traffic in the town centre streets.

You might see a few goat carts on the seafront in Victorian postcards or a horse drawn carriage in pictures of the Edwardian era.

Even into the 1950s, views show the Clock Tower junction looking fairly free of traffic and parking permissible in main shopping streets such as Western Road.

But the big boom in car ownership in the 1960s soon created problems which were compounded by the swift decline in bus and train services.

The first parking meters were introduced and National Car Parks started to acquire sites - a shrewd investment.

Brighton had particular problems with the growth of traffic. Its streets were designed for horses and carts rather than cars.

There was little town centre road building of the type that disfigured big cities such as Birmingham and Leeds. Development that did take place, such as the building of Churchill Square, almost always involved the demolition of fine old buildings.

The turning point came in the 1970s when councillors accepted in principle a scheme by the eminent town planner Sir Hugh Wilson that involved building a motorway on stilts through what is now the North Laine area culminating in a huge car park at King Street.

Sir Hugh was asked to prepare more detailed plans but by the time he did, the concept of homes before roads was in full swing and his scheme was rejected.

Another important milestone was reached in the 1980s with the approval of the Brighton bypass. There were many like me who did not like the downland dual carriageway but who were determined that the town should make the most of its benefits.

One of these was to build bus lanes in the centre from Western Road to Preston Circus to take the place of traffic using the bypass and this works well.

It enabled Brighton to build one of the best provincial bus networks in Britain and has done more than any other factor to relieve congestion.

Before its benefits were felt, The Argus regularly used the word gridlock in headlines to describe terrible traffic jams that use to occur, particularly on busy summer weekends.

I was reminded of this on reading a warning by the Campaign for Better Transport that urgent action was needed to prevent gridlock in many major cities.

Brighton has done well to keep things moving in the meantime and I reckon traffic flows slightly better than it did thirty years ago.

A big help has been one of the lowest levels of car ownership in the country coupled with improvements to the rail network.

Motorists may not believe it but Brighton has more car parking spaces than anywhere else in the south east outside London.

A minor triumph has been persuading thousands of people to take up cycling in a windy and hilly seaside town.

Encouraging two wheeled transport is one part of a movement to encourage as many people as possible to forsake cars in the city centre. The boom in bus travel is another.

But they can create their own problems as can be seen by the kamikaze cyclists who break all rules of the road and the creation of so many services that you frequently see bus jams heading west up North Street.

The Campaign for Better Transport is right to warn against new development that will create a lot of traffic. Already there are new housing projects in the centre that include little or no parking.

It is also possible to stagger working hours so that rush hour jams are averted and this is already happening. Promoting walking and cycling should lessen the congestion caused by school runs.

As more people work at home, this should also reduce traffic and Brighton is sufficiently compact for walking to be a pleasant alternative on fine days to using motorised transport.

Congestion caused by car-borne Londoners visiting Brighton on busy weekends can be relieved by encouraging them to use main roads to start their journey home other than the A23. I am thinking of Grand Avenue, Wilson Avenue and Dyke Road.

More of them would arrive by train if engineering works did not mean tedious bus journeys for travellers on so many weekends.

Modern postcards won’t ever depict streets free of traffic but common sense transport policies should ensure they don’t portray gridlock.