Three times as many people have signed a petition calling for the cycle lane on the Old Shoreham Road to be reinstated as a rival one demanding it ruled out of consideration.
The cycle lane was put in during the first lockdown to boost active travel while people were less likely to use buses and trains.
But it was removed in September after Labour and Conservative councillors voted to scrap it because of complaints from motorists.
A petition started on 11 October has now been signed by more than 1,000 people. A rival one, started on 15 November, has been signed by just over 300.
The larger petition was started by Hove mum Pascale Palazzo, whose children used the cycle lane to get to school before it was ripped out.
She said: “I saw many children, including my own, cycling to school along the Old Shoreham Road when the temporary cycle lanes were there, and after these lanes were removed, I got together with other parents, some of whom are now involved in a bike train commute along the Old Shoreham Road, and we created a petition.
“We need well-planned permanent cycle lanes on the Old Shoreham Road that take into account the needs of current and future cyclists, as well as drivers.
“The petition gives a voice to the thousands of residents, including children, for whom cycling could make a difference. A child bus pass costs over £30 a month, so cycling can save parents a lot of money.
“Children obviously don’t drive and 40% of residents in Brighton and Hove don’t have a car. We need cycle routes to be direct and for main routes to be accessible, as the new government policy describes. We all need and deserve the option of safe, cheap, efficient transport.
“As a specialist in eating disorders and obesity, I feel passionate about activity levels, especially for younger generations, as 1 in every 5 UK ten-year-olds is now living with obesity.
“Cycling can make a huge difference, but children can only do it if it’s safe. The petition has had a great response so far since it launched and we hadn’t expected to see so many signatures.”
Um, maybe the pro bike lane petition having been up there a month longer has something to do with it. Maybe not. Not sure this is news tho. The old petition is in the bike train story which you published in October. You hadn’t reported the rival petition until today. Odd? Biased? Bizarre!!! Or are the cycling zealots nobbling you???
Well said. And how come the cycling pressure group pushing this has had inside council help to set up a consultation on bringing back OSR cycle lane at same time, rather than being made to wait to present petition to full council for debate once it had sufficient numbers? Whole thing stinks! Also the petitioner against reinstating the OSR cycle lane had his petition rejected by council several times because council found excuses not to accpet it. Therefore the pro side has enjoyed multiple unfair advantages. In real life, we all know,a new OSR cycle lane would be just as ignored by 95% of city cyclists as the old one.
and there are more cars than cyclists, so they should have caught up my now
Always good to see patently biased reporting from pro-cycling, friend of the Greens, Jo. If only we had more unbiased reporting in Brighton and Hove News as we get from Sarah.
One petition has been around4 weeks longer. One petition is openly shared on social media with pro cycling groups accross the country. Both are open to abuse. The only meaningful metric was the consultation and survey which both had 70% against.
The only meaningful metric was the survey, which had the weight of opinion, largely formed on Facebook groups, piloted by councillors behind it.
The traffic monitoring and the advice of transport planners and engineers, which showed the cycle lanes were not detrimental, was meaningless.
The policy set by the UK Department of Transport, which said that consultations must not be used as referendums, is meaningless.
The efforts taken by the Department of Transport to reduce car dependancy are meaningless.
The loss of thousand pounds worth of funding, because the cycle lanes were removed with no evidence of detrimental effect, is also meaningless.
Just look at all the anti cycling comments in here. Clearly the petition was biased /s
Your comment, meaningless
“The petition gives a voice to the thousands of residents, including children, for whom cycling could make a difference” – so the 6 week consultation didn’t? or could you not be bothered to fill it in like the thousands that did? The council petition system is not fit for purpose on that we can all agree.
Filling in the consultation was easy, getting the Labour and Tory councillors to read it has been the challenge.
The bully bicycle lobby pile in on social media and places like this, but too many of them show precious little respect for the law or democracy. One of them (or more?) even tried to repaint the temporary lane after it was removed. A number of times on the seafront, I’ve been waiting in the proper place at the crossings, and I’ve had antisocial cyclists miss me only because I literally moved out of the way, and some of them have shouted at me as though it was my fault. Usually, they are going too fast to stop safely. I’ve been hit (not badly thankfully) by a speedy wobbler on the pavement near my flat. They are a growing menace, and now the funny little scooter brigade too.
You’re right, they’re bullies, these terrible people on their bicycles. They are being mean and nasty to the poor folk in their £50k+ vehicles who cannot afford to walk to the shops or take the bus.
Not all cyclists are bad. I should know, I’m one of them. But my elderly mother no longer takes her early evening walks along the seafront after a cyclist clattered into her and left her bruised and shaken. She didn’t hear him (or her) race up from behind her. He or she didn’t stop to check how she was or apologise. From listening to friends, this was not an isolated incident. Whether or not cyclists are ‘bullying’, there are too many who show little or no respect for pedestrians.
She’s more likely to get killed by someone driving a car than by someone on a bicycle.
Five people in the UK die each day on our roads, mostly because of reckless driving.
13 pedestrians in the UK die each year when walking along the pavement and a car mounts the pavement.
Not all drivers are bad. I should know, I’m one of them. But my elderly mother no longer takes her early evening walks along the seafront after a driver mounted the pavement, killed my father and left my mum for dead. He or she didn’t stop to check how she was or apologise. From listening to friends, this was not an isolated incident. Whether or not drivers are ‘bullying’, there are too many who show little or no respect for human life.
Nasty, sneering, patronising comments by people like yourself are consistent with the attitudes of the cyclists who ignore the rights of way and pedestrian areas on so much of the seafront. I love cycling, but I see so much poor behaviour by a small minority of aggressive cyclists, and its echoed in the comments on here. A more inclusive approach might win more people to your cause.
Cyclists are really nasty people and are responsible for the 5 deaths a day we have on UK roads. They often drink and cycle or text and cycle, and scare many people off driving altogether with their close, high-speed passing.
They have been known to get up to speeds of well above 100mph on the A27 and are often involved in multi-bicycle pile-ups which kill dozens in one go.
I also keep seeing articles in the Argus about bicycles crashing into people’s living rooms. One crashed into a Macdonalds just the other day.
I’m a cyclist, not a driver. You don’t need to convince me that there are inconsiderate drivers, and worse. I can at least acknowledge how poorly some cyclists behave, unlike the aggressive antisocial media mob you seem to be part of.
The only way to get a true poll is to add it as a question at a proper election.
The swiss do it all the time.
That’s a good idea. We should have a poll every time we build a cycle lane, just like we do every time we build a new road.
I look back fondly to 1974 when I ticked ‘Yes’ on my ballot paper to the question ‘Should the council demolish dozens of homes and business on the Old Shoreham Road and turn it into a bleak 4-lane dual carriageway that rips the town in two?’
I still have copies of the ballot papers where I ticked ‘Yes’ to ‘Should every street in the city be full of parked cars?’ and ‘Should all residential roads become rat-runs?’.
Really important we have cycle lanes to get folk down to the sea. Really important we are mindful of mindfulness.
What is the point if, and when, they hardly ever get used? Why didn’t all those people, who are now protesting about their removal from OSR, make use of them when they were there? I hardly ever saw a cyclist riding on those cycle lanes that were, to quote one of the councillors, wide enough for a tank to drive through? It was surely pure arrogance, and an utter waste of money, on the part of the Greens, like everything else they touch with their grimy hands.
We should also get rid of most pavements in Hangleton and Portslade. They are barely used, compared to the queues of cars stuffing every road. We could get an extra traffic lane, or more parking spaces, by ditching those unused pavements.
While we’re at it, we should demand grants from the council so we can all tarmac over our front lawns.
According to DfT statistics they were used very frequently. Not sure were you’re getting the wrong impression from.
You surely don’t mean the discredited information provided by B&H council with made up numbers do you?
Do a quick search and you will find the updated figures even with your green tinted glasses.
The only people discrediting it are the anti-cycling anti-woke nutters on Facebook. They have no statistics of their own to produce – just hundreds of hours of footage of queuing cars which proves nothing except that we have a real problem with over-usage of cars in this city.
Can you provide a link here to the updated figure you are referring to?
So by your definition you are a cycling, woke, nutter.
Even so, you still need to have facts, not fancy.
Insulting people because your arguments do not stack up, is an admission that you have lost credibility.
I do not use Fakebook nor Twatter.
Your cycling cronies do, quite extensively.
What does that make them? More insults no doubt.
Stick to facts please, it might help you to see another side.
Can you point me to your updated numbers. Appreciate it
And a quick google search will tell you what DfT stands for..
Take a look in the link below.
Quite a detailed explanation as to why the figures from B&H Council were, massaged. Plenty of other links out there and it also explains your DfT mutterings.
We have Brighton cabbies to thank for their FOI requests because of the nonsense B&H were feeding everyone.
***https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/19128049.many-cyclists-using-old-shoreham-road-cycle-lane/***
Thanks for sharing that Argus article. It’s interesting. I’m going to hunt down this data myself. It seems counterintuitive that a cycle lane would discourage cyclists to use that route. I for one, started cycling the OSR because of the lane. I know many people who took the same decision. The basis of that decision is common and logical. So the data doesn’t add up. Especially after a clear bump up in the data initially. Anyway, what we should be taking about is how we might find some common ground and find space to accommodate cycling, walking and driving along the OSR. There’s space. Just needs a bit more thought and consideration. I get why it made a lot of people angry, so any future lane must that those experiences into account. The worst thing wound be to remove OSR from the LCWIP entirely. That really would be a backwards step.
Good point. Also they should get rid of train tracks, they’re hardly used with 1 train going into Brighton Station every 10 minutes. Replace those with roads as well.
Well said I don’t see the need to gave this back as the so-called cyclist use the bloody pavement any way. One lives a long the road to me if you say anything he tell uou to, you know what.
Would love to see the list of those supporting this.
More likely to be Mr, Mrs, Master, Miss all registered at one address and so on meaning 4 and 5 from each location.
Meanwhile many residents are not online in that area.
When they were polled locally they were heavily against it.
So the social media only, empty vessel, undemocratic, dogmatic approach of the Greenies continues.
The only meaningful bit of your comment was the first sentence, the rest of it was just mad stuff that is rattling round in your paranoid brain.
We must keep everything as it is and not try to change.
We must accept daily death, air that chokes us and gives our children asthma.
We must accept obesity and social exclusion.
We must accept the cars that line every street in every city. We must patiently wait for them to pass before we can cross. If we or our children die underneath one of them, so be it.
They are our masters.
I’d love to know if this latest petition is backed up by verified emails and location confirmation.
The national cycling lobbyists have no morals when it comes to their land grab and selfish ideology.
These lobbyist have state-captured out council – to the exclusion of all common sense.
It also feels like behind the scenes they haver upped their game because they lost the argument via conventional means.
What most of us really want is a mixed transport policy that works for all the city. Cycling alone is not the long term answer, no matter how you talk it up.
This policy has come from the Conservative Party and is endorsed by PM Boris Johnson.
They’re the lobbyists you need to be talking to.
I think you have nailed it. “It also feels like behind the scenes they haver upped their game because they lost the argument via conventional means” And now they are acting like spoilt children.
It looks like the cult have been busy on twitter again.
So when the ‘temporary’ lane was in place why were there fewer than 300 people using it a day, (less than 1% of the OSR users). This feels like a reaction to losing a democratic decision and contrary to the councils own survey and consultation.
You are not allowed to refer to facts.
These are cyclists and their cronies.
They live by Twatter and Fakebook, never facts.
Hang a sec “So when the ‘temporary’ lane was in place why were there fewer than 300 people using it a day, (less than 1% of the OSR users).”
So by your reckoning OSR is used by over 30,000 other vehicles per day?!
Because there was not less than 300 a day. You have taken one piece of data from one week in July and quoted out of context. The April figure was average 398 a day. The DFT figure showed a 98% increase (independant from the council and higher than the council figure)
Monitoring was only done during a year of pandemic, 6 months of lockdown, home working, schools and colleges closed and the stay at home message.
The government stated lanes should be left in place to allow monitoring in more normal times and this advice was ignored so we do not have the normal usage.
These figures also compare well with both the original OSR lane after a year and with the Drive usage and should not be compared with long term lanes like the seafront.