Hard-ball politics again looks likely to sink a South Australian transport plan before it even gets off the ground.

Governments, federal and state, are using transport as a blunt political instrument and the losers will be people who rely on public transport.

Make no mistake – South Australia’s public transport is in a death spiral. In contrast with every other Australian city, Adelaide’s public transport patronage has been steadily declining and, as the services have worsened, the decline has increased.

We have a half-baked train system, a laughable novelty tram network, buses that don’t run on time, the major upgrade of our key road route mired in political argy bargy, and an increasing proportion of the population that has given up on anything but driving their own car.

This week the State Government announced an ambitious 30-year transport plan, one that it costed at $36 billion. You can argue with the detail, but you can’t argue with the intent. No sensible observer would suggest that long-term planning is a bad idea (although, as we pointed out this week, the State Government didn’t see the need for a transport plan until relatively recently).

And yet, barely four days after the plan was announced, the debate has already become mired in party political contests and confusion.

The State Government moved quickly – almost suspiciously quickly – to announce it had miraculously discovered the funds needed to extend electric train services to Salisbury. The electrification project , trumpeted by the Rann Government, was put on indefinite hold due to the growing hole in the State’s budget. It’s partial completion – including rows of bare electric poles – is an ongoing embarrassment.

Putting this right must have seemed a logical first step for the Government. Then, a day later, the Federal Government says it is not going to fund the project, in a letter apparently given first to a media outlet before the relevant state minister, Tom Koutsantonis, had received it.

The State Government couldn’t have been too surprised though – the Abbott Opposition had promised it would not fund urban passenger rail projects if it won Government.

Which leads us to South Australian Jamie Briggs, Abbott’s Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development who insists that freight and major roads are the Federal Government’s traditional focus for investment – not public transport.

This morning he repeatedly claimed on FIVEaa that the Tonsley rail upgrade project was a freight project. Koutsantonis, incredulous, pointed out that it was a passenger line.

Briggs kept going, only to correct himself much later.

Koutsantonis says Tony Abbott has promised Jay Weatherill that the Tonsley money will be provided; Briggs says this is wrong (but, then again, he implied early today that it was a freight project, and therefore in the Federal Government’s purview).

Confused? It gets worse.

Back in February, the then Labor Federal Government announced it had provided $2 million to the State Government to produce a transport plan for South Australia.

That plan was released this week.

Briggs now says the State Government won’t get that funding. Even though the plan has already been produced.

An additional problem is that the February announcement wasn’t quite what it appeared – the $2 million wasn’t “new” funding.

InDaily understands that the State Government asked the Feds for permission to use $2 million out of a bucket of $70 million already provided back in 2009 to study the upgrade of  South Road. The Feds said yes, and the plan was produced.

How now will the Commonwealth recoup the funds?

It is a complete mess.

We now have a State Government pushing a transport vision that it cannot fund – at least in the life of the Abbott Government, and probably beyond.

We have a Federal Government that doesn’t appear to have a handle on what it will or won’t fund, and has a set against public transport.

We have a State Opposition that hasn’t released a transport policy and is giving no signs of doing so in the near future.

We have a state Transport Minister in open warfare with his Federal counterpart.

It’s almost as frustrating as waiting for an Adelaide bus to arrive.