The Hanover and Tarner low-traffic neighbourhood scheme was handed a lifeline at a town hall meeting tonight (Thursday 16 March).
Green and Labour councillors reached a compromise, backed by the Tories, to spend £1 million that had been set aside for future schemes on the Hanover and Tarner LTN instead.
The scheme looked doomed when Labour drove through budget changes last month that switched £1.1 million to public toilets from the pilot project in Hanover and Tarner.
Then it emerged that proposed crossings, new trees and other changes in Elm Grove, Queen’s Park Road and Egremont Place might be at risk.
As a result, senior councillors thrashed out a compromise at Brighton and Hove City Council’s final Policy and Resources Committee meeting before the local elections in May.
But the prospect of any work starting in the area is some months away after the recent uncertainty.
The deal agreed tonight called for “buy-in from residents, with a clear emphasis on planned road safety improvement measures in Elm Grove, Queen’s Park Road and Egremont Place”.
A detailed report is expected to be prepared for the Policy and Resources Committee meeting scheduled for June – after the elections – so that councillors can sign off the spending.
And the final designs, which were due to have been debated on Tuesday (14 March), will be decided at a future meeting of the council’s Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee.
If approved, the council will have to advertise a number of “traffic regulation orders” (TROs) as part of a statutory consultation before work can start.
Green councillor David Gibson, who represents Hanover and Elm Grove ward, said that his party and Labour were trying to fund residents’ ambitions for the scheme’s boundary roads.
Councillor Gibson said: “This pilot is the trial – and if we are serious about our carbon-neutral ambitions, we need to be serious and do these trials.
“Some people are very sceptical. Some people are very positive. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
Labour councillor Carmen Appich said that her party’s proposals to tackled problems with public toilets were not meant to be at the expense of the long-promised boundary road improvements.
Fellow Labour councillor Amanda Evans, who represents Queen’s Park ward, spoke about the scheme outside the meeting.
Councillor Evans said that the LTN was the hottest topic in her inbox – and more than 90 per cent negative.
She said: “The gist was – and remains – that the whole scheme is in the wrong area, that is too steep and doesn’t need it, that it is likely to cause more pollution and congestion, not less, that it will seriously disadvantage disabled, elderly and low-income residents as well as local independent businesses, etc.
“The only positive mail has generally been more recent and focused on the hard-fought battle to get urgent safety improvements (and) mitigations around the edges of the scheme.
“And the gist on this has been that these measures are long overdue and necessary with or without the ‘awful’ LTN itself.”
Fantastic news. Let’s hope this is the first LTN of many!
Is this still taking the £1m from the Carbon Neutral Emergency budget, for a scheme that at best tackles 0.01% of our 1242kt Carbon?
I applaud trying to improve road safety and ambiance, but using so much of the Carbon budget for scheme that may even increase carbon by displacing traffic, seems odd.
Did anyone consider using the carbon budgetv to reduce the main road congestion that is driving vans and taxis through our residential areas and increasing our carbon?
Is our 2030 Carbon Neutral Programme really just a political sham?
This money could be used to support the unemployed and those on universal credit who need homes in central Brighton and hove. All right for people with jobs and houses. Always against those in real need
More wasted money, ban the cars and let’s all live in caves like the good old days .
At least we all know where we stand with them now. National parties are never going to put the city first. They have national party lines to toe and serving and listening to residents or caring about how all these unasked for projects impact on peoples’ lives and livings is far down their list.
I fully support the need to make change for the environment, but this scheme is just not one of those changes that’s going to have any real impact overall. I live on one of these so-called rat runs and this scheme is really just going to make it even worse.
The scheme is just displacing traffic in such a ridiculous way it’s going to cause more congestion and pollution. People who live in Hanover who drive will have to make much longer journeys navigating the system, it will not discourage those who need to drive, it will just make them more impatient and probably as a result make for more dangerous roads.
Why didn’t they try this pilot in somewhere more reasonable to begin with, I think the geography has not been taken into account at all. Some of the changes create more up hill travel which of course will create more emissions.
Closing Southover Street in both directions? That’s insane, surely it’d be better to let cars filter out that way instead of having to go to the top of Southover street.
It’s going to be a massive failure, which is a shame, as in other areas of Brighton and Hove this kind of scheme could work really well.
A Park and Ride scheme would probably have been more beneficial overall because it would reduce the amount of traffic in most parts of the City. Unfortunately, the “green” party have opposed these schemes since the 1990’s.
Let’s blow loads of money making a major A road more congested and polluted and build an LTN to ruin everyone’s lives who lives works and delivers in Hannover (minus about 10 very vocal cyclists), instead of taking thousands of cars off everyone’s roads and lowering pollution across the entire city, creating jobs in the process and improving public transport by building park and rides on the 3 main entrances to the city…
Green party, about as green as an oil terminal…