Emissions tax fails to deliver change

It can point to rising bus numbers as a success, but data revealed for the first time today tells a story that a key funding mechanism, First Registration Duty, is good at raising money, but has no direct impact towards the vision supported in May 2014.

It has not changed consumer behaviour, led to smaller, less polluting vehicles being bought or cut more polluting ones.

The more ardent backers of the original strategy will be hollering a collective ‘told you so’.

It has taken the committee a month to be happy to release the statistics, which tells a story in itself – data that should be being regularly assessed is in fact hard to come by.

States monitoring of the effectiveness of major policy changes is a major weakness. Overcome that and public confidence would grow.

However unpopular the original strategy was with drivers, its goals were clear, as were the means to get there.

When in July 2015 the States finally approved the funding, it dumped a width tax and cut the level of the emissions tax – but it did not alter the bold overall vision that was in place.

That showed that the Assembly then did not know what it really wanted a transport strategy to do. It became a strategy that was in place simply because there should be one, whatever it says or does.

Perhaps members wanted the public just to believe it was doing something towards creating affordable travel options which ‘enhance health and the environment and minimise pollution’, without acknowledging that its best hope of getting there was simply crossing fingers.

Data showing how people’s travel habits have changed since the strategy came in will help create an even fuller picture on top of what we now know of vehicle buying habits. But does the island feel any different, any safer, to what it did in 2014?

It seems apparent that E&I – and the public – now has to decide whether to accept business as usual or push for further reform.