So the brave pledge of Labour to reduce and then reverse traffic growth is to be abandoned - and more money is to be thrown into road building.
It is a defeat for all those who hoped there was to be a return to an era when most people travelled to work on public transport, and it was possible to make a journey in relative speed and comfort in a bus.
Instead the powerful car, road transport, civil engineering lobby has turned back the tide of progress and the future looks bleak for anyone who has to travel anywhere.
For a country with more car plants than any other in the world and an economy based on making more and more cars and components for them it is perhaps surprising that John Prescott held out so long.
As it is, when the government's plans for transport are officially announced in six weeks, rather than leaked as they have been this week, it will be dressed up as an integrated transport package. In English that means there will be money for cars, trains, buses, trams, even bicycles so people can swap from one form of transport to another to continue their journey.
In theory it would work if there were not so many people trying to travel at once. Almost anyone who has to travel to work, particularly in the larger towns and cities, experiences delays and congestion almost every day.
Roads are jammed, buses hardly move, trains are overcrowded, frequently cancelled and late.
Even so there has been some progress. Passenger numbers on trains are surging, partly because the roads are so bad, but potentially providing revenue for new investment. In cities like Edinburgh in which public transport has been given priority - for example creating proper bus lanes where cars cannot intrude - passengers are coming back.
Yet we are intent on going backwards. Experience has already taught us that building a new section of road encourages more traffic, and merely moves the jam somewhere else. This is not anecdotal, this is proven and acknowledged by transport planners. This does not mean a bypass or an improved junction does not ease local congestion and make some people's life better, but the claim that more and more roads represent value for money is hard to accept.
50 cars on a city road take up a lot of space. 10 buses using less tarmac could carry 500 people to work. Yet the freedom to drive anywhere is code for the right to prevent public transport working efficiently.
Two or three hundred people travel in a train. With more money spent on signalling, improved maintenance and more rolling stock the numbers travelling by rail could be doubled without adding an inch of extra track. Labour's £140 billion boost for transport as it is billed will be an opportunity missed. A good slice of this massive sum will be wasted on roads that will make no difference to the mess. The main hope now is that the much-predicted rise in teleworking and other advances in technology will really allow half the nation to stay at home rather than grind their way to work through gridlocked Britain.
