Transport Minister Ewart Brown and the team who put together the National Transport Management Report deserve credit for study which delves deeply into the problems confronting transport and for coming up with some innovative solutions.

It does not take a rocker scientist to recognise that the Island has a problem with congestion, especially around Hamilton, but the report graphically shows the causes of the problem.

By 1999, there were 52,432 vehicles on the roads - 14,416 more than there were in 1980. And the biggest contributor to the increase were private cars, showing an increase of more than 9,000.

That, in and of itself would be cause for concern, but the surge in international business and the decline in tourism means that far more traffic and employment are concentrated in Hamilton than was the case in 1980.

Indeed, office space in Hamilton has more than doubled between 1980 and 1999 from a little over 1 million square feet to 2.3 million square feet, with a further 300,000 square feet approved by the Development Applications Board.

At the same time, little has changed in how people get to work. Bus and ferry routes and their frequencies remain basically unchanged and the roads into Hamilton are essentially unchanged with the exceptions of Palmetto Road, which was completed in the early 1980s, and the East Broadway improvements of the early 1990s which made the road safer, but only did a little to improve traffic movement in rush hours.

Bermuda desperately needs a solution to the problem before the Island descends into gridlock.

The obvious strategy, as the report outlines, is improving public transport to the extent that it is clearly easier and cheaper than transport by private car.

Much of what the plan proposes, in terms of establishing more ferry ports, bringing in faster ferries and improving parking and access to the ferry stops makes eminent sense, even if it does come with a high price tag. It will be worth it, as cities like Seattle and Sydney have shown with their ferry systems.

The other challenge is to try to arrest the growth in the number of vehicles on the roads. Here, the report and Dr. Brown have harder decisions to make because few of the proposals are palatable.

It is undeniable that the introduction of the second-hand car market has had a part in increasing the number of vehicles on the road. It is impossible to state the the exact extent that it has contributed, since it seems to be clear that the number of cars would have increased anyway.

What is astounding is that more than half the vehicles now on the road are second-hand and just 48 percent are still with their first owners.

That shows the policy has been either a resounding success in enabling people who would otherwise have been unable to afford a car to get one, or a total disaster if you are concerned about congestion.

But now that the second-hand car genie is out of the bottle, it will be very hard to put it back in.

Second hand cars are just one of the politically tough decisions that Dr. Brown will have to make and means that making a success of public transport is more important than ever.

Consumers may end up with a stark choice: Take a ferry or face gridlock.