Voices is the Dorset Echo's weekly youth page - written for young people by young people.

I AM not convinced that rural Dorset is the best of places to urbanise.

The county is flawed enough as it is, roads simply cannot cope with the ever-increasing suburban car usage, so adding more houses and zero infrastructure to support it will do nothing to alleviate the issue.

The current means of cutting down on car usage have proven to be as optimistic as they have been hopeless.

People are not going to share their car just because a sign told them to.

There needs to be an added benefit for the people affected to convince them to use whatever alternatives are proposed.

Having recently passed my test, driving has proven favourable to get me around in comparison with public transport due to speed, comfort and it being cheaper.

I know it sounds selfish, but if driving is more comfortable, quicker, cheaper and I get to blast my favourite music to the point of my mirrors vibrating, why should I be inclined to stop?

But I digress from the attitude issue around an alternative to driving – cars are here to stay and if we want to phase them out, we need to do it gradually.

First we need to improve the infrastructure we have before placing any more strain on it in the form of new houses, as the residents of those houses will presumably have jobs to go to and businesses to shop from.

And to do all of this while preserving the natural beauty and character of the area requires innovation and forward-thinking that the council seems to lack.

While it is no simple task, the council needs to knuckle down and solve the present and future issues with bottlenecking and traffic flow now before we reach crisis point later on.

By Oliver Streather-Paul