Mind the gap

Prescott is not entirely to blame for these omissions. Insiders report that there were furious rows between the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Department for Transport, backed inevitably by the parsimonious Treasury, because Prescott, apparently, wanted to include specific transport schemes to go along with the development of the four growth areas.

Government, of course, does not work that way. Departments guard their territory jealously and, in fact, this episode highlights the difficulty for Prescott's new department – operating, as it is, in various interstices between older Whitehall empires. In this case, the ODPM eventually agreed a compromise, with prime minister Tony Blair's backing. The 10-year transport plan, last revised in 2002, is to be reviewed again with an emphasis on the "longer-term transport infrastructure needs of the four growth areas" of the Communities Plan.

However, the Department for Transport is already in a deep financial mess and in practice the commitment may prove meaningless. The 10-year plan is little more than a list of the available resources for transport, with the hope that there will be lots more transport money from the private sector. However, given the crisis on the railways and the return to conventional funding for road schemes, little private money is likely to be available. Therefore there is already a shortfall in the plan – as witnessed by the £312m cut to the railways announced in December – making any additional commitment on Prescott's pet schemes unlikely. Adding large schemes from Prescott's new communities will either mean cutting existing ones or raiding the Treasury, an unlikely solution given the current cost overruns on the rail network and the overall shortage of funds after the war in Iraq.

For example, one of the hoped-for schemes is a light rail network for Milton Keynes. These do not come cheap, starting at a cool £200m. Moreover, Milton Keynes' low population density makes it unsuitable for such a project. The trouble with such schemes is that it is not up to the ODPM to push them forward, but the Department for Transport, which has many other priorities.

Another example is the domestic train service from Ashford, which is supposed to run on the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link when it is completed in 2007. There are serious doubts about whether there is any money in the Strategic Rail Authority budget to fund this. Indeed, SRA managing director Jim Steer said recently that "if there were severe constraints on rail spending", there may be no services.

The lack of joined-up thinking is highlighted by the fact that Milton Keynes is the hub of a planned reopening of the railway from Oxford to Cambridge. However, the SRA has just rejected that scheme and postponed plans to start running trains to Corby – another key area for growth – just a week after Prescott's announcement, because of the cut to the railway budget.

The biggest transport decision affecting the Thames Gateway is the £10bn London Crossrail scheme. If that does not go ahead, the whole plan will be put in doubt. The problem is that rail schemes are complicated to fund and plan, but this is less the case with roads. Therefore, according to Stephen Joseph, director of public transport lobbying group Transport 2000, "there is a real danger that the road will be built, but that any public transport schemes will not, perpetuating the current transport imbalance".

Prescott will have to work hard to ensure that his new communities are not just as car-dependent as most of the old ones.