PICTURE the scene, it's an all too familiar one. There are 24 million cars on today's roads and they all appear to be in front of you.

There are also 30 million drivers and they all appear to be trying to kill you, and if not that, at least conspiring to make you late.

You are crawling along, your clutch leg is aching because it spends most of its life pressing down hard on the clutch pedal and you feel it would be quicker to walk, except it's a couple of miles, so it's not really practical.

Now picture another scene; it's one that's only familiar to a discerning few at the moment. There are 24 million cars on today's roads and while they all appear to be in front of you, it doesn't really matter, as you are picking your way through them on a bright yellow bike.

You haven't ridden from home - no, that would be too far to cycle, particularly on a work day. You just happened to have a bright yellow bike about your person when you needed it most.

The rest of the scene you need to fill in yourself, as long as you include the Brompton Bicycle, also known as the floppy bike, because it does just that. Unscrew the strategically-placed plastic butterflies and it flops and folds to the sufficiently small dimensions of, say, a medium-sized case. It's certainly small enough to carry on to a bus, train, or plane. Or it will fit behind the driver's seat of most cars. Then it unfurls to form an odd but strangely rewarding-to-ride bicycle, which will have you on your way at about three times normal walking space - and a lot faster than your average traffic jam.

Three or five-speed and boasting high-pressure, low-friction tyres, the floppy has a wonderfully well-engineered feel about it. It may lose out in the street-cred stakes - this ain't a trick mountain bike or sleek racing cycle - but it actually rides like a proper bike, not the "shopper" it resembles. Nineteen seconds from folded to erect and there are also accessories to carry bags and briefcases - and you don't have to worry about leaving it anywhere, as most of the time it will be right with you.

It's a concept in cycling that is being pushed at the moment by North Yorkshire County Council as a means to coax travellers out of their cars and solve ever-growing traffic congestion. But it's a tall order. According to the latest figures from the AA, of the 6,000 miles each of us travels every year, 82 per cent is by car. Also, 85 per cent of these journeys are less than ten miles. About 70 per cent are commuting to and from work and 80 per cent are journeys made in the course of work.

The North of England doesn't suffer the traffic problems of London and the South-East, where average journey times weigh in at a tardy 55 minutes. We only spend, on average, 21 minutes getting to where we are going.

But too often the result is the same - stress. Stress in the jams, stress caused by other drivers, stress when you come to try and park, and can't because the car park is full of about 24 million other cars. The stress is bad for your health, so is the fact you are sitting in a car, breathing in exhaust fumes and getting insufficient exercise. Sounds familiar?

Well it needn't if you follow the lead of North Yorkshire County Council's travel awareness officer Geoff Gardner. "If you go to a conference you find 50 of them lined up next to the coat rack, and deservedly so, because they are a quality item," he says. "We have an office in Fulford, which is three miles south of the city centre. It takes 50 minutes to drive there once you have driven around the ring road. With this I can catch the train from Northallerton, read reports as I go, then go for a fabulous ten-minute cycle along the river bank and get there without feeling harassed."

It's a message he is now trying to get over to 13,000 county council staff and the wider population of the rural county. "I went to an all-day meeting in Harrogate. I drove to the Great Yorkshire Show Ground - where the traffic jams begin - got the bike out of the boot and cycled the last one and a half miles into the town centre. It was very pleasant and I went to an all-day meeting without incurring any car parking charges. On the way out I cycled past all the traffic jams and jumped in the car. So it saved me time and money."

Bus companies are responding to demands for more frequent rural services and the bike could provide the missing link. "We are getting services along tiny country roads, but there will be someone who always lives just off the main roads in a hamlet," Mr Gardner says. "In these circumstances you can imagine someone using one of these bikes."

The council is encouraging staff to use the company bike instead of the car and they may be attached to the pool vehicle department. "So if someone rings and asks for a car to go from county hall to Hambleton District Council offices, for instance, we may say 'have you thought of taking the bike instead'?"

Research also shows that people who cycle stay young, boasting the same levels of fitness of much younger non-cyclists.

The bikes are about £440 to buy but Mr Gardner points out that it could result in having to provide fewer car parking spaces - which cost the taxpayer £500 per slot. "At the end of the day, if it results in ten fewer sick days, it will have paid for itself."