Transport strategy doesn't go far enough

Then we have other politicians, who, despite being told to reduce their budgets, still go full steam ahead with their pet projects. As most of the Assembly wants to spend more, Deputy St Pier's problem increases each day. So perhaps it falls to those outside the house to suggest solutions.

Traffic congestion: We were presented with two proposals (neither of which had been costed and further neither set of deputies told us how much their reports have cost us, the taxpayers).

To solve the congestion: create six to eight park-and-ride hubs. (My definition of a 'hub' being an area of land which is reserved for parking) one hub to service St Martin's businesses, two hubs to service St Sampson's Bridge businesses and four hubs to service St Peter Port. All hubs to be situated on main roads and serviced with free shuttle buses, which should ferry car drivers from the hub, where the car drivers would park for free between the hours of 8am and 6pm.

All hubs to be supplied with covered waiting areas – the shuttle buses to be small minibuses running at 10-15 minute intervals. All shuttles into Town should stop at a minimum of three points – the bus terminus, North Beach and (if necessary i.e. if there are passengers going to the Grange) at the Old Ladies' College. It could be that the buses would stop at random as required by passengers.

All parking in Town, St Martin's and St Sampson's to become pay-and-display, the display tickets to be purchased at meters on quays and parking areas, in shops etc, i.e. if you want to ignore the free parking and free shuttles and take your own car into Town, you pay for the privilege.

For any office with free parking, the utilisation of such privilege should be taxable as a benefit in kind. This includes States offices.

For people living in Town and owning a car – if they have to have a car, they must be able to afford to either garage it or park it in one of the hubs and travel back in a bus.

There would be exclusions such as disabled parking, pick-up points etc. This might sound a bit draconian, but if we have a problem, then it must be solved by all of us.

The above would be started only once the bus service is in situ and the out-of-Town sites ready with proper bus shelters in place.

Since by this means the congestion could be halved, children could safely walk or cycle to school. School buses would continue for children living in excess of one mile away from the school they attend.

Any parent continuing to ferry their children to school should have to pay and display a £1 per trip 'licence'.

Shoppers could use the shuttles or take their cars into the business centres. Pay-and-display rates would be £1 per hour.

As this congestion solution would cause a problem to CT Plus, the shuttles should be offered to that company, but only under contract that the shuttles are smaller than the current buses and that they run to schedule between 8am and 6pm.

Car dependency – pollution: I believe the above would go some way to improving and solving traffic congestion. The next problem is a greener Guernsey. To that end, road tax should be reinstituted (1.2p taken off petrol). Road tax discs to be free to all electric cars and graduated upwards for vehicles depending upon the amount of fuel used. Top rated vehicles such as 4x4s and high-performance vehicles which are already in the island should carry very high rates of road tax. (If you can afford a high-performance car, you can afford to pay excessive road tax).

There should be punitive import duty on vehicles over a specific weight, length and width, with exclusions for emergency vehicles, delivery vehicles etc. States of Guernsey vehicles should be all electric where possible, phased over time as vehicles cease to be viable. All road tax to be ringfenced for road upkeep and repairs. If a road requires repair and there is insufficient money from road tax, that road should be left in a state of disrepair until funds are available.

Empty shops: Any unoccupied building of any description, should it remain unoccupied for a period longer than six months, a tax at a fair rental value should be levied on the owner of that building. This may bring rentals down to a more affordable level as landlords of empty buildings would be penalised if those buildings were unoccupied. The only exemption to this tax would be if it could be proved conclusively that there were no tenants available (at any rental and for any period of lease) for that specific building.

Island retailers: The common complaint is that goods are too expensive in Guernsey. The defence is that rentals are high on commercial buildings, particularly in Town, and staffing is expensive. Part of the solution is lowering the rents demanded for shops, which should be helped by the paragraph above and further by an import duty. All goods imported into Guernsey by any means, i.e. post, ship or air, should be subject to import duty at 20%. Only goods which are directed to a bona fide trading company should be free of this duty, i.e if product is shipped in to Norman Piette or Waitrose or the Candy Shops, those goods would be free of duty. However, goods bought from eBay or Amazon, Harrods or Sainsbury's and sent to Mr and Mrs Joe Blogs would attract 20% duty. If individuals will not support their local shops, which in their turn have to hire local people to man those shops, who in turn pay tax, then those people pay import duty to level out the playing field.

One last point: the States of Guernsey pension scheme. Everyone knows it has to stop, but nothing is happening. The pension scheme must be stopped for new staff joining the States. It is absolutely ridiculous to go on hiring new people on a pension scheme which is known to be unaffordable.

R. HENDERSON,

Ma Carriere,

Le Petit Bouet,

St Peter Port,

GY1 2AN.