For the first time, the truth that gridlocked motorists and exasperated bus and rail passengers know only too well has been comprehensively and officially exposed: transport is in crisis in the UK.

The report, from the Government's chief independent advisers - the Commission for Integrated Transport (CfIT) - will make shocking reading for a Labour administration that promised four and a half years ago to make British transport rival the best in Europe.

In fact, passengers on public transport and car drivers are ripped off and delayed on a daily basis in Britain more than anywhere else in Europe. And many of the problems are getting worse.

The travelling public is forced to use chaotic services and jammed roads that are decades behind Europe's best and have little hope of catching up - even if the Government's £180 billion, 10-year transport plan is delivered.

Professor David Begg, chairman of CfIT, said that without a much bigger push to 'get people out of their cars' and on to a decent public transport system, Britain would move further away from 'best practice' in Europe rather than catching up.

He warned that Britain was in serious danger of sliding away from its vision of an 'integrated' system balancing driving with public transport, and was instead moving towards a depressing US-style car culture.

'There will be less choice, even longer commutes, more urban sprawl, and social exclusion for those without cars, more gridlock for those with,' he said. 'Pedestrians will be a rarity, cyclists an oddity - people will not know their neighbours and will spend more time in their cars than they do at home. This is not what we want.'

CfIT was asked by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, then New Labour's first Transport Secretary, to draw up the report, which has taken the consultants W. S. Atkins almost two years to complete.

It concludes: 'The evidence is a clear but stark demonstration of two generations of neglect, of a transport network starved of investment for half a century - a situation that forced people into their cars whether they wanted to or not.'

Britain has the most car-dominated economy in Europe, with a record 87.5 per cent of road journeys using cars, and just 12 per cent using public transport.

This statistic is not the symbol of prosperity, mobility and freedom that it might appear. The report says that Britain has the most congested thoroughfares in Europe, with a quarter of our main roads jammed up for at least an hour a day and more than a tenth of the highway network blocked daily for three hours.

A fifth of Spanish roads are congested, the next worst, with 15 per cent jammed in the Netherlands and 13 per cent in the Republic of Ireland. Fewer than a tenth of roads in France, Austria, Belgium, Germany and Portugal are jammed, and there is no discernible congestion in Scandinavia, the report said.

Britons have the longest commute times at 46 minutes a day - more than twice that of Italians. Germans' daily trek to work is the second longest at 45 minutes; the European Union's average is 38 minutes.

Despite the apparent addiction to using cars, a significant proportion of UK households still cannot afford to own one - 11 per cent, the seventh-highest in the EU.

Britain has the highest fuel tax in Europe and is the fifth most expensive country in the overall cost of owning and running a car, at just under £1,000 a year. And British households spend 15 per cent of total annual expenditure on transport, the third highest in Europe.

Despite the expense, British motorists get a raw deal with overloaded roads and relatively high levels of pollution. Much of the reliance on the car has been forced by the inadequacy and expense of a sorely neglected public transport system.

The report says: 'While we were not investing [for generations] sufficiently in better public transport, we were charging our passengers a lot more to use worse services. We offered the lowest subsidies for bus users in any European country - making our services three times the price of those in Holland.'

Based on an index of bus and rail fares for average journeys in each European country - with the cost of living and affordability taken into account - public transport fares in Britain soar above almost all of our neighbours.

If Britain's fare index is measured as one, only Denmark and Sweden are more expensive, measuring just under 1.2, with an EU average of 0.75 and Greece the cheapest with 0.2, the report said.

Britain's public transport operators, both rail and bus, are the most efficient in Europe, the report said, with the lowest operating cost per mile - but also with just about the highest fares.

And at an average of 71p per mile, public transport in London is much more expensive than in other cities selected for the report - almost 50 per cent more than Madrid, Paris or Berlin and four times more than Rome.

Begg said the Government's £180bn transport plan represented a 'quantum leap' compared with decades of underfunding. But even if the improvements are produced, countries that already outstrip us for transport delivery will continue to be streets ahead. Despite already having superior systems, France and Germany consistently invest 50 per cent more a year in transport than Britain.

'This is an absolute mountain to climb,' said Begg.

The worst and the best

· Britain's transport infrastructure is suffering from 'two generations of neglect'.

· We spent £30bn less on transport than the EU average over the last 20 years.

· Britain relies on the car more and takes public transport less.

· 25 per cent of major highways are jammed for over an hour a day.

· British bus and rail fares are three times higher than Holland's, 60 per cent more than in France, 15 per cent more than in Germany and five times more than in Greece.

· The British cycle less than 50 miles per head each year; Danes cycle more than 560 miles.

· The only superlative for Britain is safety. Road deaths are at six per 100,000 population, the lowest in Europe and less than half the rates in France, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Italy and Spain. But pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists in Britain are among the most at risk.