Brighton and Hove’s bid for funding for its second phase of covid travel schemes, including 15km of segregated cycle lanes, has been approved.
The first phase, or tranche one, of money from the government’s emergency active travel fund – £663,000 awarded in June – was spent on installing temporary cycle lanes on the seafront and the Old Shoreham Road, as well as widening pavements in the city centre.
The council has now been given another £2.367million, which it intends spending on “active travel corridors” on the A23, Old Shoreham Road, Marine Parade, the A259 west of Fourth Avenue and Western Road.
Subject to approval, the biggest amount of money, £1.128 million, will be spent on the A23 London Road, with junction upgrades, cycle lane widening, extending the bus lane and a floating bus stop near Preston Park.
A Park Active site will be installed at London Road car park, to encourage drivers to complete the last mile of their journey by foot or bicycle.
Another £822,00 is earmarked for Western Road, where pavements will be widened and decluttered and bus stops and traffic islands moved.
The Old Shoreham Road will get a new cycle lane from Hangleton Road to the city’s border with WEst Sussex.
The temporary seafront cycle lane will be extended westwards to the city boundary, cycle advance signals will be installed, and another Park Active site put in at the King Alfred car park.
Another temporary cycle lane will be installed between the Palace Pier and Duke’s Mound.
All these measures will first have to be approved at a special meeting of the council’s Environment, Transport and Sustainability (ETS) committee. A consultation will also be conducted first.
Amy Heley, chair of the ETS committee said: “I’m delighted that Government has approved the funding of new travel options in our city. We’ve been awarded this money to support safe, inclusive and sustainable travel for the city and I would like to thank council officers for their hard work in putting together the funding application.
“We want everyone, of all ages and abilities, to access safe travel in Brighton and Hove. By creating more transport choices for residents and visitors, we can also improve our health and wellbeing, reduce carbon emissions, improve air quality and support local businesses by making it possible for people to travel around the city in different ways.
“As we raised during the last meeting of the ETS committee, we will now be looking at next steps ahead of meaningful consultation with residents, equalities groups and local stakeholders on future plans, and I look forward to hearing their views on these important changes for our city.”
The funding was announced in a letter to local authorities from transport secretary Grant Shapps.
In it, he says they should consult, but use objective methods such as polling rather than “listening only to the loudest voices or giving any one group a veto”.
He wrote: “Very few changes to anything will command unanimous support, and we do not ask it for these schemes.
“But there is clear evidence that for all the controversy they can sometimes cause, ambitious cycling and walking schemes have significant, if quieter, majority support.”
This needs to be a fair consultation with LOCAL residents and businesses that also engages with the 24% of the population without internet access. The local authority may regret ignoring their own previous survey, that as hi lighted in B&H news about attempted gerrymandering by the cycle lobby, still had 68% asking that the OSR lane is not made permanent. We have not even seen the online feedback for the A259 lane, I wonder why?
Are we going to have a consultation on whether we’d like our streets to carry on being noisy rat-runs and whether we’re happy with breathing toxic air?
No doubt English Language did not form a major part of the education of members of the council. So will somebody kindly tell them the meaning of the word “temporary”?
Oh yes, Grant Shapps. Wasn’t he the one who said that it was allright for Dominic Cummings to break the law regarding travel during the first lockdown, while the rest of us were either keeping to the regulations, or were fined for not doing so?
Lol wonder if this will be a waste of money if they are so car unfriendly then why not get the pavements and pot holes fixed
Oh dear god another catastrophe waiting to happen empty cycle lanes traffic piling up poor air quality I’m a cyclist and the way the previous funding was spent was an absolute shambolic disgrace without public consultation or opinion
I’m a cyclist too and the way we’ve ended up with unsafe roads dominated by fast-moving vehicles spewing out toxic fumes is an absolute shambolic disgrace without public consultation or opinion.
This is a catastrophe that has already happened. We live with its consequences every day.
Congestion does not just happen. It is not like rain that falls from the sky. It happens because we’ve made our roads unsafe for alternatives and opened out-of-town retail and leisure faciltiies that have shut down local shops and forced people to do everything by car.
Covids pretty much over; the council risk looking like some Japanese holdout. I motion we rename the town ‘Hiroo Onoda’.
If you’re fighting against a feature designed to keep children safe when cycling to school and to encourage people to drive less in general, you need to be asking yourself some serious questions.
We desperately need to make cycling and walking easier and reduce vehicle use, not just for Covid, but for the following reasons:
To improve air quality
To save people money during an economic crisis
To fight obesity, heart disease and other inactivity-related diseases
To improve equality – not everyone has a car or is capable of driving
To reduce noise pollution
To free up precious urban space (Brighton has 45,000 parking spaces, equivalent to 4 Preston Parks)
To improve mental health
To fight the climate crisis
I can’t believe there is a single Brighton resident that is not for active travel but the Old Shoreham Road cycle lane is simply lazy planning, poorly thought out and causes terrible congestion and pollution for the local residents. We urgently need a consultation because there is no point planning tranche 2, when tranche 1 needs to go now, (even the councils own survey had 68% against it – vocal minority I think not).
So when did we have the consultation about turning every road into a car park, poisoning the air and altering the climate?
You may have noticed that there are rarely pedestrians walking along the OSR. Ask yourself why this is.
Cycle lanes do not cause terrible congestion and pollution.
Excessive car use causes terrible congestion and pollution.
Once again all anyone is asking for is a proper LOCAL consultation – we certainly have not had one for the first part of the OSR cycle lane, this must be decided by LOCAL businesses and residents.
You’re asking for a proper LOCAL consultation because you know that this is a great way of knocking forward-thinking schemes on the head and sticking with the status quo, just as has happened for the last 50 years.
Has anyone seen or used the Redway which runs through and around Milton Keynes?
It’s a perfect example of an amazingly well thought out pedestrian and cycling infrastructure which nobody uses. I used it when I lived up there but I was among about a handful of people who did. I sort of feel that is what has happened to the Old Shoreham Road cycle lanes. Theoretically it’s a great idea but in reality it wasn’t particularly popular.
I hope this will divert more cyclists from taking over the underpass and menacing us pedestrians. All you do is walk and everyone rings their bell at you. They are becoming quite a menace. I was ridden into during lockdown down there.
The Redways are underused because they go mostly go beneath the level of the roads, making them feel extremely unsafe. They’re also poorly-maintained and poorly lit at night.
Don’t panic Mr Mainwaring. The Government has stipulated what must be included in the consultations.
So there is enough money for this ridiculous scheme which no onw uses but there is no money to help the homeless get off the street ,says it all about today’s society and our tory government !!!!!
Ps I am a car driver and a cyclist
Perhaps some of the £27 billion for road building could be diverted into tackling homelessness. With thousands of people killed directly every year by vehicles and thousands more suffering from the effects of poor air quality and inactivity, it’d be win-win.
Now they are removing the Upper Shoreham Cycle lane what is the point in extending the OSR it literally connects to nothing.
The point in extending it is so that it connects to something.
Having this council involved in road planning is a bit like having the traditional Catholic priest decide on family birth control.
Really looking forward to a proper active travel network. More joined up cycle lanes, better bus links and shared spaces. So we can choose how we travel and hopefully travel more sustainably than we do now. We need to reduce pollution to improve ours and our natural environment’s wellbeing. If drivers had to cope with off road tracks and lanes that don’t join up with other roads there would be an uproar. Luckily most active and sustainable travel enthusiasts are level headed and we will look forward to seeing a better system soon.
Darling70, Unfortunately what we are getting is far from a ‘proper active travel network’ as there’s no joined up thinking here.
I’m a cyclist and I’m horrified at this. There is already a very good cycle route from Hove to Shoreham which I use all the time.
What we get next are ‘temporary’ cycle lanes that are plonked in the easiest places, with added clutter of plastic barriers and bollards, and in a way that just creates new road chaos.
Parking places are lost or dangerously placed in the middle of the road. Road width is lost for buses and cars and so congestion and pollution are caused.
Public transport is made worse and commuter traffic queues are made longer – and all for cycle lanes which often duplicate existing ones. Crossing the seafront road on foot for us locals becomes like an obstacle course as we negotiate conflicting chaotic traffic lanes.
These new cycle lanes are being imposed on us for two reasons: Firstly because the the council have been given money to spend, and secondly because those in charge hate cars and operate to a sectarian ideology.
The proposed changes will not actually help any green strategy goals, short term or otherwise.
They will have a negative affect on most people’s commuting lives, and are an act of self harm for the council’s own income, and for the city’s visitor economy.
If we want fewer cars in the city then where are the park and ride schemes, and where is our public transport network?
A ‘very good route from Hove to Shoreham’??????
You mean the one that takes you all around the houses, including a wait of up to 15 minutes when the locks are open, and makes you go right next to the sea where wind resistance is highest?
Sectarian ideology????? You mean trying to improve physical and mental health while mitigating the damage caused by fossil fuel use and by tarmacking over miles and miles of land, exacerbating flash flooding and wiping out all forms of life?
Park and ride schemes are no solution to anything. They have been proved to increase car use between towns.
Parking places ‘wasted’? There are 45,000 parking spaces in Brighton & Hove – and that’s not including things like supermarket car parks. One of the reasons people drive so much, despite the expense and damage, is that we’ve made it far to easy to park. We drastically need to reduce the number of parking spaces now.
It sounds like you have Stockholm Syndrome. You’ve fallen in love with your oppressor.
Park and ride schemes often increase car use as they make it easier to get from town to town by car.
‘Road width is lost for buses and cars and so congestion and pollution are caused.’ Most roads in the UK are congested because people use cars too much. Vehicles pollute 100% of the time, not just when there’s a cycle lane in sight.
We can either find ways of incentivising walking and cycling, which is win-win as it’s cheap and good for mental and physical health, or we can go the sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut route and find incredibly expensive ways to keep increasing car use.
Very good cycle route from Hove to Shoreham??? I nearly choked on my Cyclist’s Porridge.
You mean the route that goes all round the houses, including right by the sea where wind resistance is often incredibly high, and often includes a 15-minute wait for the locks to open and close.
Is it any surprise that more people drive, when you’re allowed to go the most direct route by car but not by bike (unless you’re OK with multiple near-death experiences)?
Interesting. I often cycle from Shoreham to Hove usually through the airport then straight down the A259. It’s direct but very busy with traffic and all the nasties that brings with it.
Last week I came over the new pedestrian bridge then took the sustrans route down Middle Road and across the loch etc..
Such a different and uplifting experience with next to no traffic (apart from other cyclists), a few turns but far fewer sets of lights. Not much difference in travel time. The loch hasn’t been closed in the last 20 or so times I’ve been over it. Being able to cycle right next to the sea along the dock road has always been a treat for me regardless of the wind.
Cycle routes in general should be designed like that to take a route away from the dense traffic. It’s much safer and more enjoyable.
While I agree with you Steve that cycle routes should be available away from dense traffic, we also need direct routes. You’ve obviously been lucky with the locks, but for someone who commutes on a daily basis they make the journey time extremely unreliable, wich is a major barrier to the Government’s objective of making cycling mass transit.
The bottom line is that all roads need to be made safe for cycling. A safe, continuous, direct route along the A259 will reduce the need for car journeys, making traffic less dense and providing a safer environment for pedestrians too. If you want to travel between 2 points on the A259, going via Shoreham Port will often be completely unfeasible.
One of the main reasons that cycling rates in the UK are so low is that for many journeys, you either have to go the long way around or brave terrifying traffic. People largely respond by driving, even though it’s much more expensive and often more time-consuming, as feeling safe is so important.
Wonderful news
Cars and cities are a bad combination
The noise is horrendous, the polluted air is linked to all kinds of negative health outcomes, and so the overall quality of life for city dwellers suffers. Air pollution has been linked to cancer, asthma, stroke and heart disease, diabetes, obesity and dementia either as a cause or as a complicating factor contributing towards premature death
I love getting up early on a Sunday when there is hardly any traffic and enjoying the tranquility and peace. Going for a walk, a run, or a cycle early on a Sunday is an absolute joy. As the traffic builds it becomes progressively more unpleasant
I would love to see fewer cars in cities and more zones where people can wander on entire roads and not just hemmed into small pavements whilst motor vehicles either thunder by, or more usually, sit in gridlock polluting the air for everyone