There are very few things I can agree with Liz Truss on. The Earth being round. The sky being blue. The end of the monarchy. But until recently these were probably the extent of my agreements with our illustrious PM.

A week after her Cantabrigian chancellor torched the national economy with his Thatcherite tribute act, Truss was forced out of hiding and marched onto regional radio to explain herself. Predictably, she failed miserably, adding only to the confusion most of us already have for the state of our country. But there was a silver lining. On BBC Look East, Truss finally committed to building a direct rail link between Oxford and Cambridge. Chalk up another unlikely point of agreement between Lizzy and I.

An Oxbridge railway link is sorely needed, nearly as much as HS2. So we absolutely cannot let it be brought to its knees again by boomer landlords and property owners, and face the fate of too many infrastructure projects that came before it. Unfortunately, a timid Truss has not done enough to stamp this out.

If you have any friends at the other place, you’d know what a nightmare it is to travel between our two cities. A cursory glance at google maps shows you your options, none of them remotely palatable.

Under the very best conditions you are looking at a minimum of a two drive between our two cities. And of course, this number could easily balloon to three hours if you’re unlucky with the traffic. But given how few of us are even allowed to have our cars here, this is an option beyond consideration for most of us.

This leaves public transport and your choices are just miserable. Coaches take upwards of five hours and risk getting stuck in traffic, while taking the train requires you to travel into London before traversing the capital and going onward to Oxford.

Of course, the case for a rail link goes well beyond just making day trips for students easier. Both Cambridge and Oxford are two of the fastest growing economies in the UK. Connecting these two powerful economies would massively boost our prosperity, add good jobs, and make our burgeoning biotech industry thrive – and despite this, a proper direct link between the two cities has been missing for over fifty years.

East West rail is just one of many attempts to rectify this shortfall. In 2006, direct flights between Oxford and Cambridge began… and lasted a mere month before the route closed after failing to achieve profitability. While the route cut the journey to just 20 minutes and cheap oil kept tickets at just £99 return, it’s probably for the best that such an indulgent method of climate vandalism failed.

The problem, so often, is that this currently is at the mercy of an infernal coalition of elderly landowners and “environmentalists″ who care more about preventing random fields from being developed than addressing climate change by building vital infrastructure and green energy. You’d expect a market libertarian like Truss to jump at the opportunity to cut red tape and put council bureaucrats in their place. She hasn’t.

She has taken only half measures and will pay the price for it

If this country’s economy is to grow, we must stop pretending that resorting to colourful sticking plasters like “Don Air” can be a legitimate substitute for improving critical infrastructure, even if construction is disruptive in the short term. Truss does seem to somewhat realise this and has called to curb the power of judicial review, a favourite tool of the obstructionists. But as so often is the case, she has taken only half measures and will pay the price for it.

Instead, Truss and her party are in thrall to the shire dwellers who look at infrastructure policy and think “Yes – but Not In My Backyard”. Allowing MPs to appeal to voters on the basis of local issues, such as opposing housing developments, is an easy, yet spineless way of picking up votes. And it means that Conservative voters themselves and their self-interest will stymie the very economic growth their government is searching for. It has already bogged down projects such as HS2 and, far be it from me to distrust Liz Truss, East West will inevitably face the same fate.

So Truss’s support of East West rail is very welcome but I won’t be cracking open the champagne just yet. Organisation and individuals still provide selfishly resolute opposition to the project because it “splits in meadows in half” or because “there must be a better way”, all without articulating a constructive alternative. If she wants growth, or net-zero, Liz Truss must be serious about dismantling the largest obstacle to our growth: how difficult it is to just build.