Mr Darling's modest little schemes, and the art of the possible

Good news for motorists stuck in traffic on the A453 between Nottingham and Junction 24 of the M1. The Secretary of State for Transport, Alistair Darling, has announced a programme of road widening schemes that will help frustrated drivers in Nottinghamshire and various other bottlenecks around the country on their way. Particularly welcome is a project to build a tunnel next to Stonehenge. Mr Darling is clearly after the druids' vote.

How popular his schemes will prove with the wider electorate is much harder to say; they are unlikely to transform the situation. Transport is unusual in being the only public service where the Government's achievements are tested by almost every citizen on a daily basis. Not even schools and hospitals, let alone universities, have that level of critical exposure. It can hurt. Residual public anger about the break-up and privatisation of the railways exacerbated the Conservative Party's dismal showing in the 1997 election.

The road protests of 2000, which threatened to bring the country to a halt and pushed the Tories ahead of Labour in the polls for the only time in a decade, stand as another graphic illustration of how damaging a botched transport policy can be to a government's standing. Although transport problems have lagged behind the National Health Service and education as salient issues at the past two general elections, there is no reason why public dissatisfaction with our shambolic railways and gridlocked roads might not grow into something more dangerous.

Mr Darling and Tony Blair are experienced enough politicians to know what the disintegration of the Government's "10-year plan" for transport is doing to their credibility, but seem at a loss as to what they can do about it. This is not so surprising, because the problems themselves are so intractable. It is an object lesson in politics as the art of the possible.

The environmental lobby is right; whenever new roads are built or existing ones widened, the volume of traffic soon rises so that congestion is as bad as it was before the improvements. The railways have already consumed the billions that were supposed to fund investment over the next eight years. The flawed plan for a private finance initiative on the London Underground has been halted by the base cunning of the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. At a potentially vast cost to the taxpayer, Mr Darling has had to indemnify the private contractors concerned against losses if Mr Livingstone's legal manoeuvres succeed. Meanwhile the congestion charge for London promises to tax the poor and harm London's competitiveness while doing little to speed journey times. It will prove an unattractive example.

So a certain amount of sympathy for ministers might be in order, although they have only themselves (and John Prescott in particular) to blame for raising expectations. Stemming the growth in road traffic was never going to be easy, such is the national attachment to the car. In the long run it will require radical changes to the way we run our lives. In the short run, Mr Darling will simply have to experiment some more with modest schemes of the type he has been pursuing since he took office. In any case he can't afford to be ambitious.

More motorway tolls, more congestion charging (learning, we hope, the lessons of the London experiment) and gradually raising the cost of motoring, which has been falling in real terms, are about the best he can do. It might not win many votes, but it might just prevent this Government becoming a victim of political road and rail rage.