THE current tendency of Glasgow and Edinburgh city council leaders to treat motorists as semi-criminals whose anti-social tendencies will have to be curbed by punitive measures is preventing any rational debate on the transport crisis in these cities. ''Motorists'' are people with jobs, trying to get to work on time in the cheapest, most convenient way.

The appalling traffic congestion faced by those commuters each morning, particularly in the whole south-of-the-Clyde metropolitan area, has two main obvious causes: the massive expansion of housing in the outer suburban and commuter town areas during the 1980s/90s, and the utter lack of an effective public transport system - even for those of us who still live within the city boundaries and pay Glasgow City rates!

The so-called ''road management'' schemes for the South Side of Glasgow defended by Councillor McAveety - which consist mainly of a series of partial bus-lanes, route closures, and extra traffic lights - have had the entirely predictable, and predicted, effect of increasing traffic congestion even further. Hence there is now greater pollution, more waste of fuel and time, greater stress - and still no improvement in public transport.

As an experiment, I tried to go from Cathcart in the South Side to the north city centre by bus the other morning, starting at 8.10am from my house. I got to work at 9.05 - a journey time of over 50 minutes to go five miles. It was a very expensive and sick-making journey, stopping and starting at every bus stop for a long time as people queued up to pay the driver, and weaving in and out of the bus lanes.

Bus lanes which are constantly broken by sections where parking is allowed or which make the road change backwards and forwards from two lanes to one in short, dangerous sections, are worse than useless.

There is only one solution to the problem: an integrated train and underground system serving the wider suburban conurbation. I would leave my car at home for that; I would even go back to cycling to work, if there was a continuous, segregated cycle route such as one finds in Dutch cities.

But, let's be realistic, we shall get neither of those things because they would need public investment, and we cannot expect that from ''New'' Labour. So we shall all continue to be punished by these ill-thought-out and ineffective ''road destruction'' schemes, and continue using our cars until we are literally forced to abandon them (or to move away from Glasgow?)

Richard Crook

147 Monreith Road East, Glasgow.

May 7.