The number of people owning their own car is likely to drop over the next 50 years because of growing anger over the state of Britain’s traffic-clogged roads, research suggests.

A rising number of adults — principally in the inner cities — will shun car ownership in favour of club-style rental deals and greater use of taxis, the Independent Transport Commission suggests. The think-tank adds that the number of miles driven by each car may fall dramatically as people seek alternative modes of transport.

Figures showed that on average men in their 20s travelled only 4,500 miles by car ten years ago, down from about 6,400 a decade previously. Trends seen among young people in recent years are predicted to cause a “ripple effect through the generations” as a rising number of adults become less dependent on the car in later life.

The study will fuel the “peak car” theory that Britain and other western nations are nearing a natural limit on the number of private vehicles that can be accommodated on the road network.

The Department for Transport forecasts that traffic on all roads will rise by 41 per cent between 2010 and 2040, including an increase of more than a third on small local networks. However, the commission said that the forecasts “may prove to be overestimates” because of the “deterrent effect of worsening traffic conditions”.

“As car use becomes less practicable for day-to-day journeys and/or less necessary, the utility derived from owning a car is reduced,” the study said. “Put another way, the perceived cost of owning and maintaining a car simply for occasional journeys is higher.”

The study, Traffic and Towns: The Next 50 Years, said that “utilising cars from a variety of sources” was likely to become a more common practice, particularly with the help of smartphone apps.

“These sources include obtaining lifts or car-sharing among families or friends, hiring taxis or minicabs, car clubs for short-term hire and conventional hire for longer journeys,” said the report, written by Peter Headicar, former reader in transport at Oxford Brookes University. “In this situation the cost and suitability of options are evaluated on a journey-by-journey basis (rather than car use being viewed as the default mode by car owners).”

The RAC Foundation rejected the findings, saying that repeated warnings over the death of the car had not been realised.