Does Jersey need a night bus service?

I have three children so don't get out much, but every so often my job takes me into town on a Saturday night - although to be honest that hasn't happened for a while.

But on Saturday 17 July I ventured out to town for the 2010 Jersey Live Battle of the Bands competition at Havana.

The event was great fun but by the time it finished and I'd gone to work to.write a quick feature - it was about 1:30am.

I was too tired to walk and who really wants to walk home to St clement at that time anyway.

And obviously there were no busses as the last bus leaves Liberation Station at 23:20 (1 to Gorey and 15 to St Peter).

So that pretty much left me with the choice of joining the taxi rank queue - which was halfway towards Chambers.

After waiting almost two hours, surrounded by 'merry' people and police, I finally got into a cab and home at 3:45am.

When you get to a point where you're waiting to get home for almost as long as you've been out - it's time to take stock.

And I'm not the only one that's had similar problems - but is it a simple problem to solve? One way could be to introduce a night but service.

In keeping with my thoughts on socially solving problems in my last blog post, I thought I would put a call out on Facebook and Twitter for people to share their thoughts.

Rob thinks the island could handle a night bus service and people would pay more.

"I've oft maintained that Jersey could use a night bus. My personal thought would be that after 23:30 the fare could rise to £2.50 (still a fraction of a taxi fare) to cover the costs of security and over time.

"Possibly the night bus service could use older buses retrofitted with driver security - that way sluicing them off wouldn't be too much of a problem.

"The service could run a circular route ala the number 10 which will "eventually" pass through most places on the island."

So I sent a message to Transport and Technical Services, who are responsible for busses and taxis in the island for their thoughts on a late bus service.

Tristian Dodd is the Acting Director of Transport and he said in an e-mail that this is something the States are looking at with the new Sustainable Transport Policy.

The new policy is due to be debated in the Autumn but they are hoping people will share their thoughts ahead of the debate.

Mr Dodd said: "TTS would welcome any feedback or suggestions your listeners and readers might have on the subject of night-time transport in Jersey."

However, at the moment the policy would just commit to an investigation.

"The new policy will commit Transport and Technical Services to investigating the potential for the bus service to provide transport for the night-time economy to the more densely populated areas of the Island. "

And they also plan to look at taxi services and "whether there are opportunities to deliver more efficient and integrated services."

So, now we know it is going to be looked at, how do our social media commentators think it could work?

Chris suggested the current Explorer routes could be used to better serve the island.

He said: "An extended version of those throughout Friday and Saturday night would be great. I'm sure taxi drivers wouldn't like it, but they can sod off as it's an absolute rip-off to get a taxi over here."

And Julie has a novel idea for paying for any new service, also suggesting it would improve safety for people out late at night.

"Security is vital. If lone girls could feel safe they wouldn't have to put up with abuse for hours at taxi rank or risk the walk home alone. Shorter bus & taxi waits would cut down violence.

"What about the clubs/pub group (Liberation) sponsoring as goodwill PR gesture - get Minister to suggest possible levy & they might suddenly feel generous!"

And on Twitter the Jersey Climate Action Network suggested it should be a fairly comprehensive service at "chucking out times".

@jcan_org_je said: "Jersey certainly does need late night buses at the weekend: to/from all parts, at/after all main chucking-out times."

Personally I don't have a problem paying for a taxi home, it usually comes to about £7, but it would be nice not to have to wait THAT long for it to arrive.

It would also be nice to have an alternative sometimes.