Stephen Byers should not be too hard on himself over the calamitous state of Britain's transport network. He is hardly the only one responsible. Transport has always been one of Whitehall's poor relations, knocked about at every reshuffle.
While Mr Byers is taking the flak the real fault lies with the way politicians treat the issue. Just as no one grows up these days wanting to be a train driver, so no young MP hopes to become a transport minister. Anyone ambitious or able who gets landed with the job wants to move on.
Since Labour came to power in 1997 there have been five transport ministers, each with a deputy, watched over by two senior secretaries of state with transport as one of their several responsibilities - as well as three reorganisations of transport's place in the Whitehall lineup.
In this time, one transport minister sat in the cabinet, for just over a year. Another held the job - no longer of cabinet rank - for just 10 months. A third managed only two months and 12 days. And a fourth was an unelected former TV presenter who took the job from the House of Lords and whose notable contribution was to advise disgruntled customers of Virgin railways to consider travelling by air or road instead.
And while after 1997 transport got its highest-ranking secretary of state of all time, as well as some welcome stability, in the shape of the deputy prime minister, John Prescott (a rare MP who actually had some interest in the subject) the opportunity was thrown away by Mr Prescott's attempt to build a political empire including environment and regional government, rather than focus making the trains run, and doing it well.
As a result civil servants spent 1997 creating the new Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions - and most of 2001 taking it apart.
This is not new. It is a political tradition to treat transport as a siding, a holding point before something better or retirement. Constant changes to the ministerial team mean that no minister has properly settled down to understand the issue, or build a strategy, or make a reputation as a crusader for improved performance. Transport policy has been the victim.
This is as true of the period before 1997 as it is of the five years after it. Policy always changes, but action is delayed. Ministers overturn their predecessors' decisions - or fail to implement them. And with each blunder the reputation of the transport department in Whitehall gets a little worse.
In the two years after the 1998 transport white paper no progress was made. In 2000 the government published a 10-year strategy which backtracked on the earlier plans, especially on limiting car use. Rail authorities and watchdogs and officials have flashed past with confusing speed.
The result is that others start sticking their oar in, only to mess things up more. Rail privatisation was a creation of No 10 and the Treasury: they had no faith in the departmental team actually responsible. A strong department would never have allowed it to take on the shape it did.
Now Lord Birt has been summoned by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown given the ultimate veto over Railtrack's fate and Tube privatisation. Transport is being steamrollered yet again.
In the half-century since the second world war there have been 10 big changes to the job's title and responsibilities. British Rail outlasted 25 transport ministers and enough MPs took the transport job at one point or another under the Conservative government of 1979-97 to fill a cricket team.
Not one of them really wanted the post and not one of them is remembered for what they did in it, not even Sir George Young, who oversaw rail privatisation, or Paul Channon, minister in the late 1980s, who achieved temporary ghoulish fame for attending the scenes of repeated train and air crashes.
In fact only two transport ministers ever made lasting impact: Lord Hore-Belisha, who in the 1930s had the flashing lights at pedestrian crossings named after himself, and the energetic Ernest Marples, minister under Harold Macmillan, who introduced parking meters, commissioned his family firm to build parts of the M1 and drew up plans for closing much of the railway network.
There have been able appointments at the department. But few got the chance to put their ideas into effect. Sometimes, this may have been lucky. Michael Portillo, a junior public transport for 18 months in the 80s, never managed to introduce his pet policy of "bustitution" - closing rail services and replacing them with cheaper buses. But neither did a stream of well-meaning ministers, from Brabara Castle in the 60s to William Rogers in the 70s and John Prescott in the 90s see their strategic plans come to fruition.
Transport is of course not the only department to suffer from the chopping and changing of Westminster life. But it suffers more than most because of it. Transport schemes outlast the tenure of any politician and require vast funds from central government. The department has never had the political clout either to persuade the Treasury to hand over the money or the stability to spend what cash it does get wisely.
Until this changes, roads and railways will remain gridlocked. So today's news that the prime minister has intervened to offer yet another short-term action plan to "rescue" the system makes gloomy reading indeed.
