WHAT becomes clearer with almost every commuting day in the Faithful City is that we're moving closer and closer to gridlock.

During this week, for instance, there've been days when the crawl which many people jokingly describe as their journey home from work has meant half-an-hour or more spent moving simply from one side of the Severn to the other.

And the majority of the cars queueing bumper to bumper have contained just one person. Crazy? Of course it is.

That's why officials at the energy firm npower, and their counterparts at the county and city councils, deserve resounding applause at the start of a drive to tackle the congestion squeezing the life out of Worcester.

Very soon - if the company's scheme works as planned - car-sharing, public transport, walking and cycling will become second nature to npower staff.

Even more good, solid common sense ideas inside the company's new Warndon headquarters will add to the imaginative effort to cut congestion and pollution.

The initiative, on its own, won't make as much of a dent in the volume of traffic as, say, we enjoy during school holidays.

But the thought of what the city might be like to live and work in, if other companies took a deep breath and followed suit, is irresistible.

Not every company, it goes without saying, operates in a way which would make that possible. But npower has thrown the gauntlet down to those for whom it would.

We'll follow the progress of the scheme with interest in the coming months. We must all hope it's a huge success.