Urgent repairs were carried out on a road in Hangleton after Brighton and Hove Buses announced that it was restricting services.
Over the weekend, the bus company said that the busy 5 and 5A and the 95 would not serve five streets at the top end of Hangleton because of “poor road conditions”.
These were Park Rise, Lark Hill, High Park Avenue, Burwash Road and the stops in Hangleton Way by West Blatchington Primary School.
The news came as a shock to the many people in the area who catch buses into Hove, Brighton and to school – the 95 takes pupils to and from Cardinal Newman Catholic School.
Several shared their concerns on social media and called on their ward councillors in Hangleton and Knoll to take action.
Labour councillor John Hewitt said that he had been in touch with senior colleagues on Brighton and Hove City Council who were just as in the dark about the bus company’s move as he was.
Another Labour councillor, Trevor Muten, the council’s cabinet member for transport and city infrastructure, said: “While we appreciate the need to improve the condition of some roads in the city – which is why we’re investing heavily in doing so – it was disappointing to learn of Brighton and Hove Buses’ decision by way of a service update on its website and not through official communication.
“There has been no formal notification to the council that these routes will be impacted by suspended stops.
“Any decision like this should be raised through official channels and the city’s Enhanced Bus Partnership. That allows us to properly inform residents and work together on a solution.
“We have, for example, responded to previous concerns by undertaking repairs on this very route.
“Our team has identified a junction that appears to be the primary concern and we are working with contractors to arrange a prompt repair.
“This council is investing more than ever before in maintaining our city’s roads, clearing the backlog of repairs and keeping our city moving after years of underinvestment.
“We are developing a wider concrete road replacement programme for next year as well as trialling alternative repair techniques in the meantime.
“We do expect buses to be running on this route and have made that clear to Brighton and Hove Buses.”
A repair team was spotted by the corner of Poplar Avenue and Lark Hill at 8am today (Monday 11 May).
By 3.30pm, patch repairs had been carried out by the corner of Lark Hill and High Park Avenue.
Brighton and Hove Buses did not say which junctions were causing concern to their drivers or how the need for repairs was reported.
The company’s service performance manager, Phil Cassinos, said: “The road surfaces in this area have been deteriorating for some time.
“We understand that (the council) are putting in place a temporary solution today so that buses can continue to operate.”
Ironically its the busses that cause the most damage. Empty heavy buses every 5 mins
It’s a profit driven service so the suggestion the bus company runs empty busses like it’s some sort of conspiracy against you personally is a silly comment.
More likely the hundreds of oversized SUVs on the school run when they could have used the bus instead.
Oh no buses and cars ruin the road! Who would have thought it! Ban them and lets save our roads.
I live near a road where a regular bus route has been introduced and multiple potholes have opened since it’s started. A bus weighs between 12 and 18 tonnes compared to an average car 2 tonnes so clearly they’re going to wear away the roads more. For Muten this is not considered and then blames the bus company when they won’t drive on pothole full roads. Needs to be replaced.
The damage caused to a road is related to the axle weight, rather than the whole vehicle weight. Buses still might have a higher axle weight than an SUV though.
Moulsecoomb will be next. Roads are awful up there.
The council should use some of the millions they make from the hundreds of thousands of PCN tickets to invest in Brightons under invested roads they have been in charge for long enough.
Instead they use it for vanity projects and clever ways to cause congestion in the city like the miles of cycle lanes that hardly anybody uses.
It’s used to pay for free bus passes for pensioners and the disabled and subsidised non profit bus routes
And why should it be just motorists subsidising this. It should be everyone’s responsibility.
Then next time there is an opportunity to vote in a new council vote REFORM instead of the commie Greens led by the lying Commie, Polanski !!
In terms of length rather than area Brighton and Hove has about 390 miles of road (BHCC 2025 figure). It has about 8.7 miles of segregated cycle lane (2021 figure). Cycle lanes make up less than 3% of the length of all the roads.
I would suggest Councillor Trevor Muten as the Cabinet Member for Transport and City Infrastructure at Brighton & Hove City Council, take a ride along Western Road and Church Road standing up on a 5 bus and see what he thinks of the absolutely shocking and downright dangerous state of that particular stretch of road. I now avoid using is on the bus because of how atrocious the ride quality becomes. If I was Brighton & Hove Bus Company, I would refuse to service the route with expensive hybrid buses until the issue is rectified.
Western Road has had the same patch dug up about five times in as many years but the utility companies digging it up never reinstate it properly and there seems to be no one among the allegedly nearly-300 employees of the council Transport department whose job it is to make them! Muten should resign. He seems to have no clue about road safety and how to prioritise the roads..
Ironic, coming from a person who regularly makes comments that are fundamentally and factually flawed, and often presented in bad faith.
It’s no surprise to see Muten trying to deflect criticism to others. Given the recent results in local elections across the country you would imagine he and Sanky would take a less myopic view of local issues and the opinions of the electorate, but I won’t hold my breath.
Trevor Muten’s response is pure deflection.
Residents faced losing vital bus services because the roads were in such a terrible state that buses refused to use them yet his main complaint was about “official communication channels”.
Then, after public outrage, repair crews suddenly appeared the very next morning. So the council clearly could act quickly, it just didn’t until the embarressment became public.
This wasn’t a failure by the bus company. It was a failure of leadership from the councillor responsible for the city’s roads.
Muten is concentrating all his time and effort at the moment, permanently screwing up traffic flow in the city centre with vg3
Just fix the roads. It ain’t rocket science.
The new electric busses way a lot more than standard busses so no doubt will wear the roads out quicker..
“Appreciating the need to improve the condition of some roads in the city” and putting things through the correct channels and talking about it does not get the roads repaired. The only thing that does that is a team of road engineers actually being present and repairing the road. Same old council , all talk and no do ( apart from prestigious vanity projects which only councillors seem to want of course)
Agreed, which is why I personally welcome seeing reports of 1,000 or so repairs being undertaken. It’s evidence of excatly what you are quite rightly expecting.
So where has all the Government money to repair the potholes gone Cllr MUTEN ?Have you been down Western Road lately,it’s like going over a ploughed field.
From what I have read and heard, the bottleneck isn’t so much money right now, it’s manpower. Plus, you can’t do every road at the same time because the city still needs to flow, which complicates things. Catching up with the conservative government neglect is one step, then, I would agree with you that moving to proactive preventative work is next because prevention is far more cost-effective in the long-term according to the reports.
I really don’t think the council leaders appreciate the level of disquiet residents have about the state of the city and especially the roads. They seem to be preoccupied with listening to local activist groups such as Bricycles and the like, thinking that by keeping them happy everything will be fine and dandy. This is exactly the mistake that previous leaders made such as Kitkat and MacCafferty. Unfortunately I do not think they will recognise or learn from their mistakes which will result in something of a shock come the next elections. I do wish that these types would realise that the wishes of the electorate are more important than their own personal ideals.
I don’t know about that. The only time I ever heard about Bricycles is in these comments, and usually from a familiar set of people. I think the primary driver of the elections will be on the national picture, for the most part, and that seems to be rapidly evolving every day!
You make a good point about ensuring a balanced view. I think the challenge there is that you’ve got loud voices which are quick to anger, but really don’t understand the nuance and technocratic reasoning, so are rarely seen in those more balanced discussions, and fail to actually engage in any meaningful way. To put in a simple way “You get more bees with honey”?
What do you think?
A new approach should be considered, like building roads that are fit for purpose and not this substandard short term rubbish that needs constant repair, yes I know it’s expensive to initiate but long term it works out cheaper, less repairs, less damage on vehicles, less maintenance means less administration which is what we should be aiming for. Patchwork quilts only make money if they are quality work, not just a bunch of haphazard squares like our roads are.
I agree with you, a long-term solution is ideal. You’re absolutely right to look at an expense in terms of how long it lasts. I guess the balance there is that some potholes need to be patched up within a timeframe in the meantime, because of legal obligations, even if it is temporary. That balance seems tricky to get right.
The long-term is hopefully one of planned maintenance, rather than the right-wing government’s neglect we have seen nationally.
I think if they just started with quality road build it would be easy for future councils to build on, getting started is obviously the biggest investment but also with the lowest maintenance afterwards, viable Companies are also a problem but we could also contract from within EU to reach a certain quality, local contractors get paid plenty but the quality does not match the money pit.
Whilst I would rather work is given locally, I think considering the scale that needs to be done, you make a very good point with EU contractors. I don’t envy Muten’s position.
Surprised the Council afford that with the cost of Free Bus Passes for the Elderly, Disabled and any Child that gets free fare to school hitting the 12 million mark.
But Roads needs to be safe for all road users not just the Buses-not just because it’s on a School Route.
Chris articulated this pretty well in another article, so I’m just going to paraphrase him and say most of the elderly free bus passes are funded by the government, rather than the local council.