Parts of Western Road will be closed to traffic in phases for about 45 days this autumn to allow the carriageway to be rebuilt – and a red route installed.
The stretch of road from Holland Road in Hove and Montpelier Road in Brighton – Palmeira Square to Waitrose – was due to be resurfaced but an assessment this month highlighted structural issues which require sections will need to be rebuilt.
Work will begin on Monday 28 September.
Councillor Trevor Muten, the council’s cabinet member for transport and city infrastructure, said: “Residents have been asking us to sort out Western Road for a long time. We are listening and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.
“This is such a busy route. Alongside cars and lorries, around 700 buses pass along the corridor every day taking thousands of bus passengers between Hove and the city centre.
“The road surface is not good enough. This major investment will repair the road surface, tackle potholes and other longstanding defects to create safer, smoother and more reliable journeys for everyone who uses it.
“While work on this scale will cause disruption, it’s essential to ensure the road is fit for the future.
“We don’t want to leave this any longer. It has to be done before the temperature drops.
“We are working closely with local residents, businesses and bus operators to minimise disruption and work through how to best keep the road accessible.”
Throughout the project, pedestrian access will be maintained wherever it is safe and practical to do so.
Detailed plans are still being developed by Brighton and Hove City Council but further information on traffic management, bus diversions, deliveries and access arrangements will be shared with residents and businesses before work starts.
Alongside this improvement work, if plans are approved by the council’s cabinet in September, a red route will be marked on to the newly resurfaced road between Holland Road and Montpelier Road.
A red route will change the current parking restrictions from double yellow lines to double red lines which can then be more effectively enforced using CCTV cameras, reducing the number of illegally parked vehicles, making it safer for pedestrians and shoppers.
At the same time, 10 new loading bays will be installed along the red route area, introducing 140 metres of loading space for shops and traders that isn’t currently available.
The council will also be introducing more disabled bays in both Western Road and its side streets, helping to support people with disabilities and blue badge holders.
The cabinet report follows public consultation held last year which received more than a thousand responses from local residents and businesses. Feedback showed more people would welcome the red route because it would improve safety, bus times and keep traffic moving.
If approved, the red route will be installed under an experimental traffic regulation order (ETRO), allowing rapid adjustments to be made in the first 12 months if there’s a need.
Councillor Muten added: “We’ve been listening to concerns from residents and businesses about the safety of Western Road.
“It has a long history of anti-social parking which is dangerous and causes congestion and it is important that decisions about the red route now go to cabinet for discussion.
“Red route schemes in London Road and Lewes Road have shown how they can make our streets safer and cleaner while maintaining footfall so these communities can continue to thrive.
“We also know that, if introduced, this will be a big change, so we’ll continue to listen and monitor the road carefully during the first year and make improvements where needed.”
Cllr Muten doing the bidding of his masters at Bricycles….again
Err, the road is collapsing, it needs rebuilding. Please engage the receptors before publishing such inane comments.
I was talking about the red routes.
Is that any clearer for you?
Jane, are you due to get your bolts tightened…
Good grief
Cyclists do ride on the roads as well so will benefit from these works.
The council should never have allowed Western Rd to fall into a criminal state of disrepair. Now they use resurfacing as an excuse to install a business-killing Red Route against the wishes of the vast majority of local residents and businesses and have the bare faced cheek to pretend they are doing us all a favour! Will Cllr Muten personally compensate any businesses which go under as a result of his mania to make Brighton and Hove a car-free city at all costs and by stealth?
Maybe the the road requires urgent repairs and it’s not a Marxist plot to make everyone work in a tractor factory.
Maxine, the red route has been on the cards for well over a year so how are they using the repair work as an excuse to put in the red route. Have you lost your marbles?
Anyway all I can say is thank god they finally are fixing this stretch of road, it’s terrible, also thank god they are putting in a red route as the parking is a joke.
Let’s hope they have organised whatever other works need doing, before they resurface. That’ll save digging it up every other week.
Will give them a chance to paint all the red lines in as well! 😉
D’oh – should probably have read the whole article BEFORE commenting (there’s a novel idea!)
Sorry – carry on. Nothing to see here…
So they’re going ahead with the Red route before the consultation is over! Well that’s a surprise ain’t it..
Hopefully, one day Brighton will have a council that accepts it is their responsibility to continually maintain Brighton and not have a major operation fixing what they have failed at for years
How do you continually maintain a road Benny?
Well benny, I think clearly they do, hence the announcement they are fixing the road, rather than skimming some tarmac on top… You do realise they road has been dug up extensively over the past 2 years by gas and electricity companies
I hope it will come with, nice, wide, smooth, family friendly bike lanes (not narrow, corrugated ones with dangerous lips like along Preston park 😬)…so it’s safe for kids to cycle! Lots more bike parking and bikes on busses like in NZ and Australia where I felt totally safe to let my 2 year old use his balance bike and later his little pedal bike to get everywhere we needed to go as a family.
People will not give up their cars until all bike lanes are safe for children, and there are options for transporting bikes back home in the case of: Tired children, inclement weather, an overly large grocery haul, a buckled wheel etc.
Also please LOTS more bike parking and regular bike fixing stations like the ones they have throughout Wellington NZ (regularly placed stands complete with full sets of Allan keys, tire levers, wrenches (attached to the stand with wires) and a pump etc, where you can elevate your bike and fix it).
I just spent a week cycling in France and those things existed there too….and Paris was AMAZING! So many bikes…. though still not as child friendly as it needs to be for families to see cycling as a valid option like they do in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and increasingly Wellington in NZ and Sydney in Australia.
Let’s make it like that here!!!
What about putting back bus stop.back at Clarence Square both sides for elderly and disabled people and more seats there are non on side heading towards Hove as we disabled people are forced to walk to Waitrose to get buses we need to sit down on way along
Buy a mobility scooter if you can’t walk…
Idiot
That’s a very glib and shortsighted answer, we have blue badges for mobility and other disability issues, for example, chronic anxiety, along with mobility issues. If it’s necessary to go to shops it’s not always possible to get as close as is needed. It is certainly impractical and unnecessary to have a mobility scooter in the boot of your mobility car.
They are very heavy and you often need a strong carer to use one. Unless you have a lot of money (and then they become heavier) they cannot go up inclines and many disabled people for instance people that have had strokes are not legally allowed to use them. My Dad had one and even if you spend £2k on these things they are often not practically useful.
And two weeks sfter completion a utility will dig it up@
Anyone checking how far these redlines will go ??? sneaking into the side streets maybe ??
My understanding is that they wouldn’t be able to go into the side roads off this, because that’ll need an additional TRO?
Not a pun Benjamin but Councils and Government are not exactly known for staying between or to the line/s
I do enjoy a good pun! I guess there’s also no point for them to do so, as they wouldn’t be enforceable. Sometimes the financial reasoning is far more convincing!
They’re extending them to your house specifically Stan and then they’re going to fix your keyboard which prints multiple question marks.
Not again????????,,,????
i
If the yellow lines had been respected this would not be neccessary
Thank you for letting me know Brighton and Hove news… Yet again as a shop owner on the Western road, I find out via a newspaper, that my street is closed for 5 weeks, even the gas and water companies have the decency to make sure we are all informed!! Half the street had a hand delivered letter last week, for some reason not us, or my neighbouring shops!
This will demolish Christmas trade for independent local businesses in the run up to Christmas as up to 60 percent of their yearly trade is in the final quarter of the year. While no one can deny the road needs resurfacing this should be scheduled for the New Year. The Red Route is not wanted by the majority of residents though so to keep the road dangerous in order to coerce us into accepting the Red Route is despicable. There should be a public meeting.
The people keeping the road in a dangerous condition are the same ones that park there all day with impunity! As a person with mobility problems who frequents this area, I cannot wait for the red route to be implemented and enforced. My sincere hope is that they fix the pavements at the same time.
On the contrary it is electric cars and buses ploughing up our roads as they are twice and even three times heavier than standard ICE vehicles. The dirty secret of environmentally ‘friendly’ vehicles never discussed.
And substandard roadwork contractors who should have been given the boot years ago. In fact there’s no point even doing these works until there is a tendering process and they are replaced. Look at the state they have left the first part of Western Road in already with cracks and pits everywhere and lines rubbing off.
Interesting initial results from the study about the effects of ULEZ on children’s lung health isn’t it? Or are you an executive for an oil company?
Electric vehicles are typically 10% – 30% heavier than their ICE equivalent, not 3 times!
You will be banned when it is implemented. No three hour stopping with a blue badge apart from in a few bays which will quickly get filled up by residents down steep side streets.
Drop-off bays tend to be 20 minutes only, so residents are unlikely to use them.
Pedestrian access is not an optional extra. The Council has to provide it under the Equality Act! Mobility scooters and wheelchair access also needs to be guaranteed. The same as they cannot go blocking shop doorways or preventing deliveries.
This sounds like a worryingly half-baked plan just like the previous Western Road works nightmare which left some residents with PTSD and caused one to take the council to court in a Judicial Review.
What safeguards are in place to ensure it is going to be business as usual for residents, businesses and deliveries? Why not close half the road, one section at a time as councils used to? Closing the whole road is unacceptably disruptive, and this is also the run up to Christmas. Some businesses may not survive another bad Christmas, following all the fencing around Palmeira Square obstructing vision and access.
No to the Red Route. It is just an excuse to sack traffic wardens and fine disabled people.
As a further reminder, you were never allowed to park along this road. Red routes make little material difference, but allows a quicker and automated consequence for antisocial parking.
As a resident of Brighton & Hove of 30+ years and frequent user of that part of Western Road, the local shops where I pull over to buy eg: bread or cakes or coffee or a birthday card or a Brighton calendar, etc – a five min stop if that – will lose my business. I will change my habits and find alternative shops. Multiply this by the number of residents like myself and work out what that will do to traders along the Red Route. BTW: I am 100% against antisocial parking on double yellows as we see all the time AND in 100% favour of bicycle friendly lanes. But a Red Route, really!?….
As a resident of one of the side streets of Western Road, I wholeheartedly agree with the improvement of Western Road and the implementation of the red route. The situation was unsustainable both in terms of the quality of the road itself and the illegal parking. People who say they just stopped there for a ‘few minutes’ to shop unfortunately must take some of the blame for the situation getting out of control. You were never allowed to stop on double yellow lines to shop. And a few minutes becomes half an hour and then some people start to push the boundaries further and further. Equally some of the shop owners take advantage of this. I have sat in a restaurant there and seen the owner come in and ask a member of his staff to call him if they see a traffic warden. Will it undoubtedly put pressure on the side streets. Of course but something had to be done. The next step is to crack down on pavement parking in this area especially on those side streets.
I, and everyone I know, fully supports the red route and hope that it will make Western Road a safer place to walk, cycle and take the bus. I’m sick of busses being held up by selfish people parking illegally on both sides of the road.
There is a shadowy, well-funded group of shopkeepers and others putting up signs and sticking flyers under cars trying to encourage local residents to support their campaign to stop the red route. They claim to represent local residents. THEY DO NOT!
There should never have been a need for a red route in the first place. It’s been brought about by selfish people parking on double yellow lines – many of them shopkeepers who simply leave their cars there all day.
The argument that people need to be able to ‘stop and nip in for a loaf or bread’ is ridiculous. If you cannot possibly manage to walk to your local shop in Western Road then why not drive up to the big Tesco’s and park entirely legally. I can’t think of a single shop along Western Road that sells items that are so large someone would have to pick them up in a car. The illegal parking has caused Western Road to become a complete dump – which many people actively avoid. Perhaps, once the roads (and pavements) are clear it will be a more pleasant place to walk to and shop.
The argument that deliveries won’t be able to be made is even more ridiculous. Currently, there are virtually no loading bays and with the red route scheme there will be multiple loading bays. They will be monitored by cameras to stop people parking in them all day. Another win in my book. I do hope, though that there will be sufficiently sized loading bays for the local Tesco and Sainsbury’s.
The only argument that the objectors make is that it could drive illegal parking up the side roads. Unfortunately, that is true but that’s the fault of the illegal parkers not the scheme. I’m told that enforcement up side roads would be come a new priority – fingers crossed.
I for one, will be voting with my feet. I’ve taken note of the businesses on Western Road who have posters up objecting to the red route. I won’t be spending any money in any of those shops again.