As much as £10 is spent on rail for every £1 spent on roads, when actual usage is taken into account, according to new research.

The calculation came from the Drivers' Alliance and the TaxPayers' Alliance and was based on passenger kilometres - the distance that road and rail users travelled.

The research showed that in 2007/08 spending on rail was £8.2 billion and total road spending was £8.3 billion.

During this period only 59 billion passenger kilometres (p/k) were travelled by rail, compared with 749 billion by road.

The two alliances said that this meant total spending per 1,000 p/k was £138.66 for rail and £11.11 for road. Therefore rail transport received 10 times more spending per passenger km compared to road transport.

There was a similar pattern in freight transport, where rail received eight times more spending per tonne kilometre, according to the research.

The two organisations said motorists paid £30.3 billion in fuel duty and Vehicle Excise Duty - £18.4 billion more than the combined total cost of road transport greenhouse gas emissions and road spending.

Drivers' Alliance chief executive Peter Roberts said: "We desperately need to prioritise roads before rail if congestion is to be tackled. Adding road capacity is cost effective and provides genuine savings in journey times for the majority of individuals, goods and services. Spending vast sums of drivers' taxes on extravagant rail projects will not address the immediate transport problems we have in the UK."

Jennifer Dunn, policy analyst with the Drivers' Alliance and the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "Motorists are getting a really raw deal thanks to the Government's misguided transport policy. Drivers suffer a double whammy - they pay huge amounts of tax, and only receive a disproportionately small share of transport spending.

"Continuing to neglect the road system and tax motorists to the hilt cannot be an option if we want to stand any chance of having a decent transport network."