Double-decker trains, a new high-speed North-South line, longer trains - these were some of the ways Alistair Darling suggested this week that Britain's crowded rail network would cope with the expected 30 per cent increase in passengers, some 300 million additional rail journeys, in the next 20 years. There is little reason to think that these vague promises have any more substance to them than John Prescott's much trumpeted ten-year development plan for the railways, of which almost nothing now remains. Not only is the Transport Secretary reheating old ideas that have already proved costly and impractical; but while offering such pap to an impatient travelling public, his department is cutting services, scrapping development plans and eroding whatever little independence the privatised train operating companies still have.

Thanks to local initiatives and successful marketing, many of Britain?s loss-making branch lines are now enjoying a sharp growth in passengers. In Cornwall, some have had rises of up to 40 per cent. But so eager is Mr Darling to cut costs that he is now insisting on economies that will almost halve the number of daily services. Train companies, straining to pay inflated premiums to run franchises, also propose to save leasing costs by storing coaches in sidings. The result will be fewer services, more crowded trains and the decline of lines that have been relieving road congestion in Cornwall and other tourist areas.

Meanwhile, Mr Darling has been quietly axing infrastructure spending intended to ease, quickly and relatively cheaply, the bottlenecks. Plans for chords, crossings and relief lines have been scrapped, reopenings deferred, vital new freight routes - such as a reinstated Oxford-Cambridge line - abandoned. Instead, he has repeated pie-in-the-sky proposals that, even if approved, would not be ready for years. Double-decker trains sound fine; but who will pay to have the bridges raised and tunnels widened? Longer trains are logical; but unless platforms are lengthened, or the objections of busybodies such as the Health and Safety Executive are overruled, such simple measures will not happen. As for talk of a new high-speed line, passengers can see, from the stuttering development of Crossrail in London how averse governments, especially this one, are to long-term infrastructure investment.

After several years of successfully keeping a low profile, Mr Darling is finding that inoffensiveness is no substitute for policy. He says railways are not in the business of "carting fresh air around the country". He should halt the cartage of hot air in Whitehall.