Transport policy

Introduction

This Brief brings together relevant information on on-Island transport from five sources –

• Government Plans and ministerial plans.
• The 2021 Census.
• The 2023 and 2024 Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Surveys.
• The Carbon Neutral Strategy and the Carbon Neutral Roadmap.
• The Sustainable Transport Policy, published in December 2023.

Summary

• In 2021 there were 1.53 cars or vans per household in Jersey compared with 1.24 in England.
• In 2021 16% of households did not have a car or van, the proportion varying from 2% in St Mary to 30% in St Helier.
• The usual mode of travel to work in 2024 was private car alone (35%), private car as or with passenger (10%), walk or run (33%), cycle or electric bike (8%) and bus (5%).
• A government priority is to reduce carbon emissions. 28% of carbon emissions derive from road transport.
• The key targets to be met by 2030 in the Carbon Neutral Roadmap include ending the registration of new petrol and diesel cars and small vans and 67% of vehicles decarbonised.
• The default assumption in Government Plans is that fuel duty rises in line with inflation. However, in the last three Government Plans fuel duty has been frozen at a cost of £6 million a year.
• A scheme to incentivise the purchase of electric vehicles has been scrapped. At the end of 2024 about 2% of vehicles were electric and during 2024 22% of new registrations were for electric vehicles.
• The Sustainable Transport Policy makes no reference to fuel taxes and does not provide an analysis of how the 2030 objectives are to be pursued. It prioritises six areas
  • making the roads safer for all of us
  • reallocating road space to prioritise cycling and walking
  • raising the profile of public transport
  • managing vehicle movement through parking measures
  • supporting the Island’s economy
  • enabling future transport mobility and legislative change.

Statistics

Chapter 8 of the Report on the 2021 Jersey Census has a chapter on transport. There is also a specific short report Census 21 Bulletin 6 Transport. Key statistics are –

• There were 68,219 cars or vans owned by private households, 1.53 per household compared with 1.24 in England.
• The number of cars per household has increased from 1.0 in 1971 to 1.37 in 1968, 1.48 in 2001 and 1.53 in 2021.
• 16% of households did not have a car or van, the proportion varying from 2% in St Mary to 30% in St Helier.
• 38% of single adults and 30% of single pensioners did not have a car or van.
• The usual mode of travel to work was private car alone (40%), private car as or with passenger (11%), walk (23%), cycle or electric bike (4%) and bus (4%). 14% worked mainly at home. The walk mode varied from 43% in St Helier to 5% in rural areas.

Chapter 4 of the Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey Report 2024 also provides some key data –

• 35% of adults used a car or van on their own as their usual method of travel to work, 33% walked or ran, 10% used a car or van with other people, 8% cycled and 5% travelled by bus. The proportion running or walking to work ranged from 57% in St Helier to 19% in suburban areas and 4% in rural area.
• Around 75% of car or motorbike commuters never travelled to work by walking, cycling or using the bus.
• 45% of adults said they would like to switch some of their car journeys to active travel.
• 23% of households in rural parishes owned an electric bike or e-scooter compared with 10% in St Helier.
• 28% of adults never travelled by bus and only 4% used a bus four or more times a week.
• Adults living in rural areas were more likely to travel by bus at least weekly – 20% as against 18% for those in suburban areas and 15% for those in St Helier.
• Cheaper fares and more frequent buses would be the main encouragement to people using buses more often.

The Carbon Neutral Strategy and the Carbon Neutral Roadmap

The Carbon Neutral Strategy, agreed by the States Assembly in February 2020, set out the context for the strategy and five guiding principles to Jersey’s approach to carbon neutrality one of which was “a strategic focus on all emissions”.

In April 2022 the States Assembly agreed the Carbon Neutral Roadmap (CNR). The objective is “at a minimum reduce emissions by 68% compared to the 1990 baseline by 2030, and reduce them to 78% from baseline by 2035”. The Roadmap set out a series of targets and deadlines in order to meet this commitment.

Road transport is very relevant to carbon neutral policies as currently 28% of emissions come from road transport. The Carbon Neutral Strategy commented that “any viable route to carbon neutrality by 2030……will require the rapid electrification of a large proportion of road transport and space heating in Jersey”.

The key targets in respect of road transport to be met by 2030 in the CNR are –

• End registration of new petrol and diesel cars and small vans.
• 67% of vehicles decarbonised.

Jersey mirrored the UK in announcing a ban on the registration of new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030. The EU adopted a later target of 2035. The UK subsequently moved to a 2035 target. The new Labour Government moved the target back to 2030 but has softened it by excluding hybrid vehicles from the ban. Jersey has retained the 2030 target.

The CNR states “in order to achieve a 68% reduction in the Island’s total carbon emissions by 2030 the target is to shift 67% of the Island’s fleet away from fossil fuels by 2030”. The UK industry body, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, estimates that by mid-2035 46% of cars on the roads could be zero emission under a central scenario. A report by PwC on the Distributional Impacts of the Carbon Neutral Strategy suggested that with no incentives electric vehicles would account for 13% of the Jersey fleet by 2030, and with support 23%. Shifting the Jersey 2030 proportion from 13% to 67% is not achievable. It would require many households to bring forward the purchase on a new car. The target raises two other issues –

• Scrapping vehicles before the end of their useful lives is itself environmentally unfriendly. The average life of a car is over 20 years. A switch to electric cars without increasing the number of vehicles on the road implies a significant number of cars being scrapped prematurely. If petrol and diesel vehicles that are traded-in when a new electric car is purchased then the effect may simply be more cars on the road.
• Electric vehicles are much heavier than normal vehicles and the construction of them itself generates emissions. Vehicles in Jersey do less mileage than vehicles in the UK, suggesting that the ratio of reduced carbon emissions from electric vehicles to the emissions involved in constructing them is lower. Replacing a petrol or diesel vehicle that does 20,000 miles a year by an electric vehicle has a much greater effect on emissions than if the vehicle does 2,000 miles a year.

Fuel duty and support for the purchase of electric vehicles

A seemingly rational policy in support of carbon neutral would be to increase the tax on carbon fuels and use the proceeds to subsidise fossil-free road transport and home heating. However, in practice a seemingly rational policy frequently conflicts with political priorities.

A report that the Government commissioned from the consultants Oxera as part of the CNR work listed four policy measures for decarbonising transport –

• Measure 1: substantially increasing existing fuel taxes to discourage the use of petrol and diesel vehicles.
• Measure 2: imposing a ban on the registration of fossil fuel vehicles. To the extent that diesel vehicles can immediately transition to the use of HVO (see Measure 4) while maintaining a sufficiently low emission intensity, they can be made exempt from the ban.
• Measure 3: providing financial incentive(s) for the purchase of EVs, either in the form of a purchase grant, and/or in the form of a scrappage payment to owners of fossil fuel vehicles.
• Measure 4: facilitating the use of second-generation biofuel, such as HVO, for all diesel vehicles, subject to further technical due diligence of the feasibility of such a transition in Jersey. This would involve granting HVO an exemption from fuel taxation.

Measure 1 will be considered in detail subsequently. On Measure 2 it has been announced that registration of fossil fuel vehicles will be banned from 2030, but it remains to be seen if Jersey will follow the UK in softening the target. Measure 4 has been paused.

On measure 3 the concept of a scrappage scheme has been scrapped but an incentive scheme was introduced which provided for a subsidy of 35% of the purchase costs of an electric vehicle, or £3,500 (whichever is lower) on vehicles with a purchase price under £40,000. However, the Climate Emergency Fund, from which this and other initiatives are funded, allowed for only about 1,200 subsidies. The scheme has now been closed.

It should also be noted that an incentive scheme for purchasing electric bikes had been introduced and was included in a progress report on the CNR under the heading of “Speeding up adoption of electric vehicles”. There is no mention of electric bikes in the CNR and the scheme had no relevance to the speeding up of the adoption of electric vehicles. The scheme has been closed.

There was always some questionable analysis in the proposals. The 35% subsidy sounded attractive but there was a limit of £3,500. There are no new electric vehicles for sale at £10,000 so no one got the 35% subsidy. And there was only funding for around 300 vehicles a year.

Currently, the high price of electric vehicles means that the vast majority are purchased by higher income people. The subsidy will not benefit the lower paid, who typically buy second-hand cars or who do not have cars. This point was made in the report by PwC on the Distributional Impacts of the Carbon Neutral Strategy .

This policy could benefit middle and higher income households and could exclude marginalised groups such as low income households, older adults, people with disabilities, ethnic minorities and people of colour. This will primarily impact wealth inequality with middle and higher income households purchasing the expensive assets using government subsidy.

Chapter 11 of the Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey Report 2023 provides some useful data on attitudes to switching to electric vehicles–

• 35% of households said they were very likely or fairly likely to switch to a fully electric vehicle by 2030; 48% said they were fairly or very unlikely. The likelihood of switching was closely related to income. 52% of those earning £80,000 or more said it was very or fairly likely that they would switch, compared with 29% of those earning £40,000-£59,999 and 20% of those earning less than £20,000.
• In response to the question “what would prevent you from switching to a fully electric vehicle in the next seven years”, 69% said upfront cost, 50% lack of charging points, 35% battery range off-Island, 22% battery range on-Island and 16% not enough understanding. Up-front cost was quoted by 84% of those who found it very difficult to cope financially compared with 44% of those who found it very easy.

To be successful the incentive policy must have caused more people to purchase electric vehicles than would have been the case without the subsidy. There is no analysis on this. It is quite possible that the main effect has been to provide a subsidy to those who would have purchased electric vehicles anyway.

The Carbon Neutral Roadmap also requires “substantial annual increase in VED [vehicle emissions duty] to be set out in each Government plan”. This has duly been done. The duty is levied on vehicles other than electric vehicles on a sliding scale rising to £9,921 for the vehicles with the greatest emissions. The Government plan forecasts that VED will be £3,190,000 in 2025, an average of less than £2,000 a vehicle, a long way from compensating for the higher cost of electric vehicles. The PwC report said that “the typical additional marginal cost of new electric vehicles is estimated to be between £12,000 and £16,500 when compared with new petrol or diesel (ICE) equivalents based on EU data”. However, the expectation is that this gap will narrow considerably over the years.

The default assumption in the Government Plans is that duties on fuel and alcohol are maintained in real terms and that tobacco duties rise above RPI.

The Government Plan 2023-2027 stated –

The Climate Emergency Fund is the vehicle through which the funding for the policies in the roadmap will be met. The delivery and resources plan within the roadmap apportions funds for all the policies around sustainable heating and transport, wider emissions and addressing the biodiversity crisis and protecting wildlife and habitats. Included in the resource plan is funding for the completion of multi-year early start projects that were awarded funding by the States Assembly in Government Plans between 2019 and 2021.

The Fund was created with £5 million transferred from the Consolidated Fund in 2020 and receives annual income from an above RPI increase in fuel duty.

The Plan stated that –

To help with the ongoing cost of living impacts, Ministers propose to freeze fuel duty for all types of road fuel in 2023…….This freeze for a full year should be considered an exceptional policy, which is being proposed specifically to help with the increases in the cost of living.

The freeze reduced forecast government income (based on the assumption that duty would increase in line with inflation) by £2,213,000.

The Government Plan 2024-2027 stated that –

The Climate Emergency Fund is the vehicle through which the funding for the policies in the roadmap will be met. The Fund was created with £5 million transferred from the Consolidated Fund in 2020 and receives annual income from previously agreed increases in fuel duty.

The difference in wording between the two government plans will be noted from the Climate Emergency Fund receiving “income from an above RPI increase in fuel duty” to “previously agreed increases in fuel duty”.

The Government Plan stated –

Following the freeze on road fuels duties in 2023 to help with the cost of living, Ministers are proposing to return to the policy of holding the rate of duty constant, in real terms, by indexing it to the growth of RPI (10.9%). The duty on a litre of fuel in 2024 will increase by 6.96 pence per litre to 70.85 pence per litre (or by 7.31 pence per litre to 74.40 pence per litre including GST).

The uprating of fuel duty signals Ministers’ commitment to the agreed Carbon Neutral Roadmap. Ministers also remain firm in their commitment to allocating 9 pence per litre from fuel duty receipts into the Climate Emergency Fund.

In the event, the Council of Ministers accepted a recommendation from the Economics and International Affairs Scrutiny Panel that the fuel duty should be frozen.

Similarly the duty was frozen again in the 2025 Budget.

The effect of freezing the duty for three years has been a reduction in the real rate of the duty by around 20% and a reduction in Government revenue from the previous assumption of duty rising in line with inflation of around £6 million a year.

The position currently is therefore that the targets for 2030 remain in place, that there are no incentives for purchasing electric vehicles, although the duty of new high emission vehicles has been increased substantially, and that the real value of the duty on fuel has fallen by around 20%.

The Government does not publish in an accessible way statistics on the proportion on new and existing vehicles that are electric. The statistics that are available show that at the end of 2024 2% of vehicle were electric and that during the year 22% of new registrations were for electric vehicles. The 2030 target of 67% of vehicles being decarbonised is clearly not attainable.

Sustainable transport policy

Successive governments have struggled with articulating a joined-up policy on transport. The Government website page on States reports lists –

• Jersey’s sustainable transport policy (2010).
• Sustainable travel progress report (2015).
• Sustainable transport policy (2019).
• Second interim report on sustainable transport policy (2021).

(An interim report was published in 2020 but is not listed on the website.)

The CNR said that the Government would “bring forward the Sustainable Transport Roadmap to the States Assembly by the Q4 of 2022”. This did not happen. A progress report published on 18 July 2023 stated that this has now been renamed “Sustainable Transport Policy” and would be published by 24 July – six days later. This did not happen. On 6 December 2023 the Government published Sustainable Transport Policy: Next Steps .

The Policy does not have a summary; it is best summarised in the press release accompanying the report, which states that the document prioritises six areas –

• making the roads safer for all of us
• reallocating road space to prioritise cycling and walking
• raising the profile of public transport
• managing vehicle movement through parking measures
• supporting the Island’s economy
• enabling future transport mobility and legislative change.

Some of the key commitments include –

• The creation of a Strategic Road Safety Unit and the publication of a road safety strategy.
• Creating more accessible, safer, covered waiting areas for bus users.
• Identifying opportunities to bring low carbon vehicles into the bus fleet.
• Reviewing charges and charging time periods for parking in public car parks.
• Working with key stakeholders to support shared mobility transport solutions.

The report includes a map of high-level “Strategic Corridors”, where the Government recognises investment is needed to improve cycling facilities to support those who want to travel by bike instead of by private vehicle.

It also outlines an ambition to reduce the dominance of vehicles in the centre of St Helier, which may see commuter parking moved to areas nearer the edge of town.

A “next steps” delivery plan includes publishing in 2024 a road safety strategy, a cycling and walking infrastructure strategy and networking planning guidelines for bus travel.

The report includes ten decision making principles, originally published in 2020, for transport that will be “built into and applied in public decision-making in a range of ways” –

• Recognise that fewer motor vehicle journeys will be good for Jersey.
• Conform with the Jersey mobility hierarchy (which begins with children, elderly people and people with disabilities and ends with single occupancy cars).
• Improve transport options, including parking, for people with mobility impairments.
• Make walking and cycling routes more attractive, especially for school and commuting, by providing safer routes.
• Invest in a better bus system that more people want to use and that is accessible to all, [and present a Bus Service Development Plan to the States for debate during the spring session 2021].
• Recognise, and price fairly, the social and environmental costs of private vehicle use [and present a Parking Plan for debate during the Spring session 2021].
• Reduce the impact of vehicles on our landscape and create more space for people in St Helier.
• Create public service and planning systems that reduce the need to travel.
• Discourage the use of petrol and diesel vehicles and encourage the use of zero emission vehicles to reduce pollution.
• Work with businesses that rely on road transport to support their efficient and safe use of the road network, their delivery and servicing needs and their uptake of alternative low carbon fuels.

The report does not mention fuel duty but rather considers measures on parking as a method of managing vehicle demand. There is no mention of the target for 67% of the vehicle fleet to be decarbonised by 2030 and there is no analysis of the impact of the proposed measures on emissions.

The Infrastructure Department’s Business Plan for 2025 is relatively silent on transport policy. The only specific reference is under the heading of “cycling and walking strategy”: “Prioritizing infrastructure improvements that favour pedestrians and cyclists. Publish a Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Strategy to identify and develop strategic corridors and key walking zones across the island, facilitating safe active travel routes.” The cycling and walking strategy was originally scheduled to be published during 2024.

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