The more you unpick the government's spending review, the more apparent it becomes that Kent has come off particularly badly on the transport front.
Strange, given that we all know that the forecasts for traffic growth are all pointing to a continuing upward trend and that the county, as a major gateway to Europe, has the additional burden of its roads coping with an extra 8million vehicles a day.
But there has been a steady trickle of bad news for motorists and others since George Osborne delivered his spending review. First, there was the news that Dartford tolls were to increase to £2.50 each way by 2012 - causing a few jitters for Kent Conservative MPs who had made great play of pledging to get rid of the toll charges before the election.
Then there was the news of a hike in rail fares for hard-pressed commuters, which have been widely condemned. And in the last 48 hours, the confirmation that planned improvements to the A21 are on hold til 2015 and that a scheme to improve Junction 10 of the M20 near Ashford is also under review.
This catalogue of delays and the prospect of paying more for travelling by train or crossing the Thames in a car makes up for a pretty dismal outlook - not even taking into account the fact that petrol duty is to go up in the New Year.
According to KCC data, nearly 80 per cent of households have one or more cars and six in ten drive to work. A further 74,000 people commute into Kent on a daily basis.
I don't know why Kent has fared so badly. I suspect that in addition to all the cost-benefit analyses, ministers took a cold look at the political conseqeuences of their decisions and came to the conclusion that however unpalatable they might be, they would be unlikely to have serious electoral ramifications come the next election. (That's sometimes a price you pay for having thumping great majorities - whatever the party.)
And I don't doubt that in a few years time - just before the end of Parliament -ministers will be making rather more optimistic noises about some of these schemes that have been kicked into the long grass.
Still, if the government was hoping to get onside with motorists and rail commuters in the county, it needs to do a bit more than simply postponing much-needed road schemes and hitting them where it hurts most - namely their pockets.
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Still, at least David Cameron appears to have grounded Boris Johnson's latest wheeze to re-examine options for an airport on the Hoo Peninsular. He stepped in today to declare at PMQs that the government has no plans for an airport anywhere in the county.
The question is whether BoJo is listening.There's a growing sense of exasperation among MPs and council chiefs in Kent that the Mayor being so persistent in pursuing his much-criticised airport plans, seemingly determined to do whatever he can to get them off the ground.
This exasperation is felt particularly by MPs in the county - it's not even as if the Mayor has any jurisdiction or powers in the area he feels would be so well-suited to a new airport. Perhaps our MPs should turn the tables and start talking up the idea of a new airport around the vicinity of City Hall.
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