More cars on Guernsey than ever before

There are more cars on Guernsey's roads than ever before.

New figures show 2,000 extra vehicles registered in the island in the last year.

The motoring boom comes as politicians work on a new road transport strategy - the details of which are due next month.

There are 87,553 motor vehicles registered in Guernsey, up 1,917 in a year, of which 73% are privately owned.

Richard Lord from Sustainable Guernsey is calling on the government to bring in measures to encourage us to ditch the car.

He said, "We've become almost obese with car culture now, we've not got freedom any more on the roads. I also like that fishing boats are regulated by vessel capacity units, by the breadth and length of their boats and also by engine size. I would be very happy to see a one time car tax on the breadth, width and engine size of the vehicle."

We spoke to people at North Beach car park to find out why they use a car. They told us:

"I do love my car. It's like a shopping basket my car, you go into town you buy everything you put it in the car, and you can go for coffee."

"I am dashing in to get some Euros to go on holiday, so it was for ease and quickness really. Would I use the bus? Yeah if there were smaller buses and more frequent buses."

"I've got to be somewhere for a quarter past eleven and I live at L'Ancresse and it's my only form of transport rather than get a bus."

Parking is free in Guernsey, there are no taxes on emissions and there's no MOT. A complete review of Guernsey's Road Transport Strategy is underway right now - the results of that are expected next month.
(from CTV)

Is there really this many extra. I cannot see how accurate this figure can be, there is no regular road tax, which showed a truer figure of what vehicles are actually on the road, I suspect that many vehicles are either scrapped without their log books being returned or have left the Island

What do you think?