External travel links are critical to an island. The question is what type of links will we have in 2035 and beyond. By then flying will be prohibitively expensive for most people. Therefore we should be limiting our investment in the airport with a view to reducing its scale and diverting the resources to harbour facilities.
Private transport is always going to be difficult to change. It would help if our cycle route patchwork were a proper network. It would help if we had more frequent buses that were convenient to use. If people insist they have to have private cars, then it would be better they were not fossil fuelled. Electric cars would suit Jersey, but the price new is high, and many people simply could not afford a new car. To remedy that we need a second hand market. The fastest route to that is to require all hire vehicles to be non-fossil fuel powered within a 5 year period. A few years after that a flow of ex-hire vehicles would become available.
Short-term we must have a functional bus service - one that people find usable. We need buses for more than just getting workers to the office and back, or visitors to the airport People need to travel on Sundays, they should be able to participate in cultural activities outside of working hours. Buses need to be much more accessible to people with young children, buggies, large parcel, rucksacks etc. Frequent minibuses seems to be more feasible than large buses for many of our routes. The routes need revision - how insane is it that people in St Mary and St Ouen can't get a bus to our local shopping centre in Quennevais?
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