EVERY MORNING THEY SIT THERE, steaming.

Three, smoky and endless lines of queuing vehicles. Fuming drivers all gritted teeth and white knuckled grip on redundant steering wheel, inching up to Winchester on the M3.

You can sail by southbound with that same guilty pleasure you get when your queue at the Post Office abruptly races forward, leaving former line buddies gnashing their teeth in the middle distance.

It’s the same in reverse in the evening and there’s a similar picture across the M27.

Suited men and women grimacing inside their expensive tin boxes, separated by inches of smog, doggedly creeping their way to work like a bizarrely well-heeled refugee train.

Tens of thousands of us do it to ourselves daily and it’s been going on for far too long.

Your grandsons and daughters will barely believe it when they read about it in the history books.

Wide eyed in astonishment they will ask “why?” and who could blame them, because it’s madness.

The utter failure of the south of the county to get the road network it needs in order to prosper is well documented.

Despite being home to some of England’s biggest, most lucrative centres of business, Hampshire has failed to make the case for major investment in its transport infrastructure with those that hold the purse strings.

It’s left us with an ageing network bulging at the seams and choking the economy like the noose on a condemned man.

We have sat back and watched as the funding for grand transport schemes has been funnelled away to the great cities of the north, which gleam with sleek, modern trams and new high-speed train lines.

Yet here, where much of that money is generated, we’re still tut-tutting about the A34, that vital but clogged artery to the Midlands that should have been turned into a motorway years ago.

Dreams of a direct train/tram link from the heart of Southampton to Portsmouth remain exactly that – despite years of talk and plans.

The M3 still constricts to two lanes, choking off the economic life-blood that should flow through our principal route to London.

We did get a fourth lane on a couple of stretches of the M27, which is welcome but is a sticking plaster where major surgery is needed.

So what can you do while our leaders talk us to a standstill.

Well, actually, there’s plenty. Working from home is a popular and sensible answer for some, except for us green-eyed desk slaves.

And, yes, car sharing can help.

Employers can do everyone a favour by encouraging flexitime or varying the hours of a working day away from the traditional nine to five and spread the load on the region’s roads a bit.

It’s underwhelming though, isn’t it?

What is needed now is what has long been needed – a significant upgrade to our transport network to make it fit for purpose.

Widen the motorways, open up the hard shoulders, invest heavily in public transport and dedicated new infrastructure links tying together our major centres.

It needn’t be just an exhaust pipe dream.