Jersey · Transport · 1966–2023

127,911 vehicles on a 45-square-mile island.

Jersey’s registered fleet has grown 278% since 1966, and has been essentially flat since the mid-2010s, which is the more interesting half of the story.

Registered vehicles, 2023: 127,911Registered vehicles, 2023
Registered vehicles, 1966: 33,809Registered vehicles, 1966
Vehicles per household, 2021: 1.53Vehicles per household, 2021
Electric or hybrid, 2023: 4.2%Electric or hybrid, 2023

One vehicle registration per line, 1966 to 2023, from Statistics Jersey’s own count. The series peaks at 127,911 in 2023. Two things are worth separating. The long climb to the mid-2010s, which is the island motorising, and the plateau since, which is not. A flat fleet on a growing population means fewer vehicles per person, but vehicles per household is a census-derived figure, published only at census years, so the two cannot be read as one continuous ratio. This is a count of registrations, not of vehicles in daily use.

Saturation

Vehicles per household

Census years only, 1971–2021. From one vehicle per household to 1.53.

Drawn as bars rather than a line, because these are census readings at ten-year (latterly five-year) steps, and a line between them would invent a path the data does not describe. The figure has barely moved since 2001, which is the same plateau the hero chart shows from a different angle.

Fleet mix

Electric and hybrid vehicles

Three published years. By 2023, 1.9% of the registered fleet was electric and 2.3% hybrid.

ElectricHybrid

Electric registrations nearly doubled across the three published years, from 1,365 to 2,453. They are still 1.9% of the fleet. Statistics Jersey publishes this on only three years, so it is shown as three years rather than extended into a trend line.

Getting into town

Morning peak traffic into St Helier

Vehicles counted on the nine main routes into St Helier at the morning peak, 2016–2026.

Axis starts at 8,500, not zero

10,798 vehicles in 2016, 9,096 in 2026, a fall of 16%. The 2021 trough is pandemic working patterns; what matters is that the figure has not returned to its pre-2020 level since. This is one of the Government of Jersey’s own tracked Island Outcome Indicators, so it is a figure ministers are already measured against.

Axis starts at 25%, not zero

41% in 2025, against 29% in 2006. This comes from the Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, which did not carry the question every year, so the gaps on the axis are unasked years rather than zeroes.

opendata.gov.je, "Total number of vehicles registered in Jersey"; opendata.gov.je, "Island Outcome Indicators" - Annual data (Government of Jersey Common Strategic Policy indicator set)

Public transport

Annual bus passengers, 2019–2024

Summed from Statistics Jersey's weekly bus-patronage series.

Patronage collapsed in the pandemic year (2020) and has since recovered to 99% of its 2019 level by 2024.

Leaving the island

Annual air and sea departures, 2017–2021

Summed from Statistics Jersey's monthly departures series. This resource's published range is shorter than the bus series above.

Departures only. The full two-way passenger count, air and sea, running from 1995, is on the Economy tab, where it sits with the visitor-economy material.

opendata.gov.je, "Transport Statistics" - Bus passengers weekly; opendata.gov.je, "Transport Statistics" - Departures monthly (air and sea)