A transport strategy going nowhere fast

Traffic into Town is down a few percentage points, the number of cars being registered each year has fallen and fewer motorists are driving solo.

Bus journeys are the biggest success, but, given that is where the millions have mostly gone in subsidies, it would be a major surprise if they were not.

Most of the rest of the ‘progress’ identified by Environment & Infrastructure is playing with percentages.

So the boom in cycling along Les Banques for the 90-minute morning commute period sees an impressive 48% increase. Except that is a rise from an average 56 cyclists in 2014 to 83 this year. Meanwhile, 1,400 cars and 347 commercial vehicles are crawling along the east coast in the same time.

Likewise, the speed limit cuts imposed in April are heralded to have brought ‘small but significant reductions in speeds’. In Braye Road, the most controversial of the 25mph zones, average speeds have gone down slightly to just under 30mph but it is still over the limit.

The impression remains that the island is tinkering at the edges of its transport problem.

Junctions are overloaded and roads are often log-jammed. Speed is determined more by the flow of traffic than any road signs.

And with the development of hundreds of new homes in overdeveloped areas of St Peter Port and the northern corridor that is only going to get worse.

E&I has offered to review the strategy again in four years. It will be the same uninspiring story.

If anything, the two new superschools will have brought a whole new headache.

The architects of the transport policy will rightly point out that its failure to shift the dial is not their fault. The plan was hobbled by deputies in 2014 when all the levers to alter public behaviour (paid parking, free bus travel and an emission-based registration duty) were removed.

However, to meekly accept a States policy that is so unambitious while many of the island’s roads choke with traffic for another four years is a failure of leadership.

Transport is too key an area for government to remain directionless.