First the council should make the buses affordable. Buses in Reading are a rip-off. Park and ride services become an immoral trap when they don't offer a "freedom of the town" ride with an all-in simple cheap fare scheme.
Hitting the tradesmen and hitting a family with a full car with congestion charging is also a counter productive move. Neither is it sensible to have a bus with only one or two passengers in it. Lets get school buses back -include the private schools in the scheme (Abbey, St Josephs etc)

Point of information relating to the previous post. From memory, Thames Valley Business Park and hence Microsoft and Oracle are in Wokingham District NOT Reading, so business rates would go to Wokingham Council. But even so business rates don't go directly to the council but to the government who then distributes money back to councils across the country.

Reading has grown by making it attractive for large companies such as Microsoft and Oracle to relocate to the town. reading Council benefits enormously from the business rates it can charge these organisations. On the back of the business growth there has been considerable growth in residential property values.

Now the council is to penalise people for working in these companies. This will make Reading less attractive as a business location and this could well have the effect of pushing down property prices in the area. Many of the traffic problems appear to be as a result of the traffic frustration measures introduced by Reading - similar to Ken Livingston 'fixing' the lights in London to make traffic worse.

Simon W, Kingston

I think that congestion charging is part of the answer to Reading's transport problems. I also think that there needs to be good local shops and services to reduce peoples need to drive, decent alternatives to driving (cheap regular public transport, a safe and joined up cycle network and good paths) for people to use instead of a car, and a mechanism to move people onto these alternatives such as individual transport plans. Where car use is necessary it needs to be as efficient as possible; car sharing, car clubs, efficient cars.