Car ‘tax’ looms
Friday 6th February 2009, 2:30PM GMT.
MOTORISTS may have to pay £26 a year to park.
Environment wants to replace the already approved charge for long-stay spaces in Town with an annual one for all disc parking areas, regardless of location or length of stay.
It sees the parking ‘tax’ as a way of funding the road transport strategy, which has not been implemented fully due to lack of money. The department wants to rescind 2003 States resolutions to charge for long-term parking at North Beach, the Odeon, Salerie Corner and the streets of St Peter Port.
The £26 charge it is proposing is for the rest of 2009 with the sum reducing proportionately depending on when the scheme is introduced.
The department argues that no time has been lost in introducing a scheme because the legislation still required royal assent.
Motorists will be expected to display a valid clock showing that payment has been made whenever they leave their vehicle in a controlled parking space.
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What a great incentive for tourists. As a regular visitor to the Island I stop at various places during my daily “travels” – its one of the great things about relaxed Guernsey – now I will be taxed for my island visit. But then its what I have always said – beautiful island, lovely people, run by complete plonkers.
If they want money for the transport system – try not overspending, without sanction, on everything else they do.
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If the objective is to raise money then just add another 5p a litre to the fuel tax and avoid all the admin headaches ….. policing, issueing of tax discs, accounting … etc etc.
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Agian the staes want to waste time and money. Shocker!!!!! How about they reduce their own wages and didn’t over soend on other projects…..
Better still they give up there free parking spaces
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I agree with Jamie. The poor pensioner who uses their car once a week to go to the shop is going to get hammered disproportionately compared to the average office worker who uses their car 5 days a week.
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Is this going to be on top of the proposed charge for town residents who have to park in disc zones? At the moment I have a permit which allows me to park on the street I live in past the ususal time for that zone. They were talking about charging people £25 for these permits. We still have to display parking discs, so is it now going to cost me £50 for parking outside my own house?
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Whom God wishes to destroy he first makes mad.
It’s pointless to try to explain to Environment why this idea is so stupid. Only those completely oblivious to reason could have thought it up in the first place.
Or is it possible this proposal has been put forward for no other purpose than to muddy the waters and delay any sensible paid parking scheme for another year or so?
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How will this work for visitors to Guernsey as I frequently am
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Jamie, suggest you go and work at Environment and kick some sense into them ;-)
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Use the fuel duty and you don’t create any extra costs for administration or policing or pursuing court cases/fines etc….introduce pay clocks and you’ll need a whole army of civil servants to make sure that people are using them properly…just another work creation scheme dreamt up by people who should know better….but rarely demonstrate that they do. Shame on them.
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Would the introduction of car tax mean that visitors could not park in St Peter Port?
I thought that the island wanted tourists?
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Whoops, I missed the point…if you increase fuel duty that will also effect the many thousands of civil servants…if you just introduce parking clocks it won’t matter to them, as they can park at work, for free! What was I thinking?
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Does this fee apply to those that travel by horse and cart? As somebody that visits town on a fairly regularly basis, (maybe twice a year), I’m disgusted to learn of this proposed fee. The last time I popped into town I had to leave my pony and trap teathered to a lampost at the top of Smith Street – whatever next you’ll be telling me I cannot drive my goats down the high street on St Patricks Day. M. Barnes.
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Well what a cop out yet again by our states members who remain as weak as ever and still unable to make a proper decision between them. £26 a year is such a pathetic figure to be charging people that it will probably cost more to implement and police the scheme than it will actually contribute towards the road transport policy.
People demand public services and they need to be paid for in some way. People are parking their cars on states property and pay nothing towards the upkeep or policing of these areas. People who use port permit places are charged £500 a year with no guarantee of a place. This land is also States owned so why is there a price differential? Will people who pay for parking on the harbour be allowed to use their permits in other parking areas? Well I think we can all guess the answer to that one.
Our politicians are generally too scared to make an unpopular decision in case they upset people. Paid parking is a perfect example of a ‘user-pays’ tax, just like tax on fuel so where is the problem. In a lot of instances people are too wedded to their cars and won’t look towards a bigger picture to make this island a better place with fewer car journeys.
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If paid parking is to be introduced, how difficult can it be to simply use a pay and display scheme like the UK have been using for years? You only pay when you use it, traffic wardens enforce the scheme in the same way they enforce the current disc zones.
What is it about Guernsey authorities that they have this incredible knack to make even simple things complicated?!
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How will this be applied to the 23 hour long term parking spaces where you don’t have to display a parking disc? Will all long term parking places such as the hospitals and Frossard House become disc areas? If so will staff get their discs paid for by the States as I believe is the case at the harbour and airport?
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IS THIS THE WORST STATES EVER ?
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Dont you think its about time that Guernsey started to really look and see if its got the right group of people incharge.
Its a shame the current states doesnt seem to understand the way paid parking works in the rest of europe.
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Please don’t tell me people are complaining about paying £26 a year to park?
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£26 is too high – £12 per year for each car, resulting in a ‘paid for’ parking clock which covers all current disk zones.
The easiest way to implement paid parking with the least disruption.
What the hell is all the fuss about? Surely it’s fair enough to pay £1 a month to park anywhere!!! I don’t work in town, but why should town workers be expected to pay more? Without town workers, the economy would be crippled – everyone to pay the same amount.
DO NOT implement a logistical nightmare solution with meters/zones etc. Keep it simple.
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WHY SHOULD THERE NOT BE PAID PARKING ALMOST ANY OTHER SIZEABLE COMMUNITY IN THE UK HAS PAID PARKING. UP UNTIL RECENTLY MOST UK HOSPITALS HAD PAID PARKING NORMALLY A POUND A VISIT NOT PER DAY BUT PER VISIT. WE HERE HAVE LOW PRICED FUEL NO MOT NO ROAD TAX IF WE WANT BETTER ROADS AND BETTER AMENITIES THE MONEY HAS TO COME FROM SOME WHERE GET REAL GET INTO THE 21st CENTURY YOU WANT THE CONVIENCE OF YOUR OWN CAR THEN PAY FOR THE PRIVILEDGE I FOR ONE WOULD HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH BEING CHARGED A POUND AN HOUR FOR PARKING AT ANY OF THE TOWN CAR PARKS ON STREET PARKING SUCH AS TOWN SQUARE ST JULIANS AVENUE £1.50 PER HOUR FOOTES LANE 50p AN HOUR WHER IS THE PROBLEM WITH THAT ITS CHEAPER THAN ANYWHERE ELSE
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This would be far better than polluting our views with barriers, ticket machines or parking meters. But not as efficient as raising the cash through petrol tax or not wasting money elsewhere on daft projects and absurd overspends which somebody should always be held accountable for. Are our States incapable of getting suppliers to work to a contractual fixed price?
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wow dont you have it lucky, £26 a year to park, i live in jersey, it cost fiftey pence a hour, and no lay in on a saturday if you need to replace your paycards.
i often look at what you do over there and have come to the conculsion that guernsey looks at what we do and decides that it wont go down the bad paths that we have.
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Can someone please tell me why I should have to pay this £26.00 annual charge as I havent taken my car into town for over 5 years and I do not intend to start now. I dont see why they cant do the same as the mulistories in the uk. You pay 20 pence per hour and I have never heard anyone complaining about it (Not even the workers).
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Why invent another way to collect money?
This is just a wasteful way of creating more work, if the States want extra money they should simply collect it through through their fuel tax the same way as the road tax.
The amount on each gallon will be tiny and the pain spread more widely than loading it onto town workers who don’t have private car parking.
There’s already too much beaurocracy, we don’t need more!
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“WHY SHOULD THERE NOT BE PAID PARKING ALMOST ANY OTHER SIZEABLE COMMUNITY IN THE UK ” Who gives a hoot about the UK?
Is that the extent of your argument. The more independent and visonary we are about our way of life the better; slavishly following a failed country because most of the politicians are either to stupid or too lazy to think out of the box is a worry.
PS. STOP SHOUTING!! :)
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Jamie
I totally agree with you, just add 5p per litre for fuel, job done, sorted.
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Just had a quick look at the Jersey parking situation on gov.je / parking.
They have a total of 5,453 paid parking spaces
( including beach parks etc )
They have 5 multi storeys in St Helier, plus open areas like ours, yet there is now a protest movement about a plan to build a sixth multi storey in the centre of Town.
Isn’t that proof enough that years of paid parking in Jersey at 56p per unit ( for a non-guaranteed space )has failed to winkle the Jersey commuter out of his car ?
Should we blindly follow a failed plan ?Perhaps it’s time for those in charge to remove their Rosie coloured spectacles and give the subject a little more thought.
About four or five years more thought should cover it.
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Forget paid parking altogether – we don’t need it – it will not prevent people from using their cars.
If the States wants to get people out of their cars they will have to improve public transport first. Free buses, much more frequently and to all areas of the island would be a start. I am fed up with having to wait half an hour for a bus that takes an hour to get me home when i could drive home from town in 15 minutes! That is the real problem.
Paying for a parking clock idea is a nonsense and will not work. Jersey has a stupid system too. We do not need to copy other jurisdictions in this. There is only too much traffic on the roads at peak times – other times the roads are fine. If we can persuade those people out of their cars who are only driving to town to park for 8 hours then we will be on a winning streak – but we have to make it workable. At the moment at peak times the buses are full, frequently drive past people waiting at bus stops and they soon get fed up and start using their cars again. We tried it – hated it – and are back to using our cars.
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It’s all about the overall ‘tax take’. The alternative to allocating more funds for transport is either reduce costs or increase tax!! If the later, add to fuel as that would also ensure administration costs do not have to increase.
If it’s a strategy for reducing the demand on parking, it will fail, as most car owners will no doubt find a need to park in a timed zone at some point and will therefore have to pay £26, once paid, I guess they will ensure they get their money’s worth. Maybe increasing the demand for road space and reducing the use of trips by bus!!
Now what business can I buy into that I can get the States to subsidise and then tax the public to further pay for my growth!! which would ensure I do not have to finance any risk but accept the growth profits!!
Incidentally, it is always worth remembering, £26 net equates to approx. £37 of anyone’s income (100% salary – less, 20% tax and 10% SI).
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I agree with Ray and Muzeek. Car parks begat cars. Get over it, Guernsey people drive. The weather’s rubbish, the bus service is as good as it can be and none of us live on nodes with a straight run to our place of work. There isn’t a bus service in the world that I could use; one child to school in the morning, one to playschool, and the nthe afternoon pick up. I could not be without my car.
In’t it strange that Francis Quin, ex Roffey and the strange Deputy who used to head up environment are the biggest supporters of paid parking yet – three have never commuted to town and at leas two certainly have never carted kids around our unplanned island.
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If the island is serious about getting people to use other forms of transport then the easiest way is surely to increase the cost of fuel substantially, and use the extra revenue to create additional subsidised bus routes. Not 5p a litre, more like 50p, that would make people think twice about unnecesary car journeys, particularly if extra bus routes meant that nobody lived more than a few minutes walk from a bus stop.
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Well said Jackie.
To prepay for parking presumes that there are parking spaces available. There are not enough.
So when spaces are not available can you ask for a refund?
Also if you pay for something that is then not forthcoming is that not fraud?
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This is a stupid suggestion….. and I think Environment know that.
I am very happy to pay a tax to support a public transport service. Public transport is there for the benefit of the whole island and everyone who lives here… unlike my car which benefits only me and has a negative effect on the island as a whole whenever I use it. So charge me a yearly tax on my car…. the bigger the car, the more I should pay….. but call it a ‘Public Transport Tax’. It is NOT a car parking fee since it is not charging for when or how much you use the car parks.
The point of charging for parking, is to create a disincentive for using the car. A yearly parking rate has the opposite effect and encourages you to get the most value out of your parking disc by using it as much as possible.
Alternatively, I would be happy with raising the necessary funds for public transport by adding more tax onto fuel. They say that less than 2p per litre would do the trick however I think it ought to be at least 5p and then the busses ought to be free. The extra money is also needed to increase the amount of busses so that the service is viable for more people.
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Of course adding a few pence to fuel does mean increased costs for commercial vehicles, many of which would never be parked in a timed zone and under the proposed ‘new car tax’ would not need to pay out £26 per year.
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If the aim is to reduce the overall amount of cars being used and parked on the seafront then this will not work.
Those who pay the 26pounds yearly fee may actually drive more “to get their monies worth”.
Either parking meters or a boomgated entrance to carparks is a better way to go. User pays per occasion is a much better deterent. A manned boomgate would be ideal if the states wanted to charge less for pensioners etc.
A regular latenight bus is also a good idea for those who say that they need to drive because they work too late.
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“Pay as you go” is equitable and cheap to administer viz. duty on fuel.
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Jamie’s right, stick it on the road tax and be done. Phil is even closer to the mark, stick 50p a litre on and watch car use fall. It worked in the UK when petrol was 120p a litre.
But if we do have to have ‘pay when you stop’ instead of ‘pay as you go’, I cannot see the problem with pay and display? We could get a few cheap pay and display machines off eBay, stick them on North Beach, job done! Admittedly the initial outlay is a little higher than printing 30,000 parking clocks, but at least it addresses the real problem. And after all, we’ve already got traffic wardens policing parking, and retraining them to read a pay and display ticket rather than a parking clock should be possible. Call it 50p an hour, time for my gran to do her shopping, and £20 a week off the poor suits. Just enough to make some people think about the bus…
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Parking ‘tax’ should be added to fuel, that way the load is spread between all of us, £26 is a lot to pay if you only park in town a couple of times a year!
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The fairest thing to do would be to put in on petrol but that wont happen as the powerful drive big motors.
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To Jamie and all the other people that agree with him – do not add 5p to fuel please!!! I use my car regularly but do not work in town. What benefit would upping the cost of MY fuel have for ME? It’s a little bit selfish your way of thinking me thinks.
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Ben – if that 5p stops you driving occasionally then it’s good for the environment and congestion. If it doesn’t then your 5p will also help underwrite the bus service that is so essential to our community.
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For the attention of B of Feb 6th.
I am not complaining about being asked to pay £26 for a years parking. I am angry, and yes, complaining about being asked to pay £26 for NOT parking.
I had to pay £500 for my port parking permit for 2009. Therefore I never, I repeat, never, use the public parking. Why for heavens sake should I and others like me have to subsidise those who do.
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Mick and the other non-parkers – what’s the issue? If you “never repeat never park”, then you don’t buy the permit. Why is that so difficult to comprehend?
And for everyone else whinging – it’s 50p a week! 50p a week for parking! Blimey. Would that buy you more than a few minutes in London..?
I’m all for reducing car use and anyone saying they couldn’t live without their cars are clearly too spoiled and/or too lazy to flipping try. Such high levels of car ownership are only a recent phenomenon – how on earth did people 10-15 years cope? What are those two funny things dangling off your torso?
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I rode my motorbike into town many times last year and always used the crown pier. The last time I did this the bike park was full (only space for about 12 bikes) so I parked where the bike park used to be without hindering the car parking area. On my return I’ve got a ticket. On seeing the warden I had a word to him about the sense of ticketing a bike that was not parked inconveniently to anyone. He replied that it was still against the law and would still stand. I then told him that the only reason I used the bike was for the convenience of other car users and that from now on I will use my 4×4 instead on my weekly visit into town. He said that there was no reason to be like that, to which i replied that I didn’t start it. I now strictly only use the motorbike for purely pleasure.
Bring in such an idea as a paid for parking clock and I will then Have my wife with me in the 4×4 driving round and round the St peter port waterfront whilst I do my weekly 15 minutes and i’ll drive around whilst she does hers. If you want my money your going to just have to resort to a measure that will cost States deputies and civil servants aswell. Isn’t that idea galling, a battle of principles.
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