Cyclists quizzed the new Labour council today (Thursday 6 July) about its decisions to pause and review two key “active travel” projects since taking office in May.
They asked questions about the Valley Gardens scheme and the proposed A259 seafront cycle lane extension at a meeting at Hove Town Hall this afternoon.
Labour councillor Trevor Muten said that his party was committed to active travel and wanted both schemes to work for everyone while achieving the best value for money.
Councillor Muten, who chairs the council’s Transport and Sustainability Committee, said that the best way to encourage active travel – walking and cycling – was to use both the carrot and the stick.
He said: “We must move away from regressive attitudes towards those who need to drive for work, to access services and connect communities across our city.
“Yes, we need to ensure public transport is accessible, affordable and meets the needs of our city and ensure active travel is attractive and safe, encouraging more people to do so.
“Studies show that the regressive ‘stick’ approach without ‘carrot’ encouragement is counter-productive and proven not to give the gains for active travel.
“Labour recognises that studies show a combined ‘carrot and stick’ approach to active travel is the best way to ensure uptake. We listen to the experts when it comes to policy development.
“By implementing real choice for our city’s transport options, we plan to encourage more residents and visitors to choose active travel, bike share, public transport and low-carbon options to move around our city.
“We have a plan to meet the immediate need and to develop a vision that works for the 2030s and beyond.”
Work was due to start this year on the final stage of a revamp from The Level to the sea – known as Valley Gardens Phase Three.
The most controversial feature is a plan to replace the Aquarium roundabout – in front of the Palace Pier and Sea Life Centre – with a T-junction controlled by traffic lights.
Councillor Muten said that the junction of the A23 and A259 had to work for all, including cyclists, walkers and people with disabilities.
Those asking questions about the review of the schemes included Cicely Lloyd, from the Brighton Multicultural Women’s Cycle Club, who asked why her group had not been consulted about review.
She said that her members could not afford the bus and used bicycles to get around the city.
Another question came from Duncan Blinkhorn who said that he was concerned that cycle lanes currently stopped abruptly, making it hard to get to the seafront safely.
He said that Labour councillors had made the case for change 17 years ago and were now responsible for delaying the Valley Gardens scheme that they had proposed.
And another question came Andy Keetch who sought assurances that Labour councillors would not seek to scrap or delay the plans.
Councillor Muten said that the council was committed to the Valley Gardens scheme and other active travel measures and would improve the connections on routes for cyclists.
Glad to see Labour take a more balanced approach. I am still a bit bemused how VG3 has become an active travel scheme? The money from the LEP was given on a business case but the scheme has become totally distorted with the cycle lane taking priority over both buses and pedestrians. A re think is required.
So long as we get emissions down I don’t care
Seems fairly obvious that encouraging alternative forms of transport – walking, buses, cycling – is the way forward
Just give pedestrians, bus users, cyclists etc safe and pleasant routes. If you build it they will come (see Paris and Amsterdam for evidence
Headline today…
UN says climate change ‘out of control’ after likely hottest week on record
After record breaking days on Monday and Tuesday, unofficial analysis shows the world may have seen its hottest seven days in a row
It’s an emergency. Net Zero now
But the money for the LEP was not about an active travel scheme but improving an area in order to justify a business case. Unfortunately the balloning local contribution to this, (originally £1 million and now £6 million ans rising), requires a re think. The fixation on a cycle lane is to the detriment of the scheme it needs to be far more balanced to achieve it’s original aims.
Actually the issue here has nothing to do with the cycle lane. Why would it, it’s good for motorists as well as cyclists and pedestrians. The issue is removing a roundabout (the most efficient form of junction, proved by hundreds of studies) and replacing it with traffic lights. This will massively increase congestion, thus pollution, to no real advantage to anyone. The last adminstration had a weird hated for cars and tbh that would be the only logical reason to create a traffic jam for no reason. This has been noted on nearly every scheme they proposed, so it’s correct to look again at the designs and get it right first time rather than make a mess and spend millions more a year later rectifying silly mistakes.
This scheme can and absolutely should benefit all. That’s logical surly.
FYI I cycle
No mention about the motorist, though
Seems as if the people who have the least money will have to continue getting about without the better, safer routes that Labour agreed to only last year.
Max,
Seems to me, that the route already installed and the proposed extension are nether better or safer for ALL especially those on feet.
With everything, Labour may have agreed with the plan but these plans are never, ever set in stone, there’s always little flaws that need to looked at. Or, with an election coming up, perhaps it was tactical planning, who knows.
Labour, knowing the elections were coming up started listening to the residents and even before the voters went to the polls started U-Turning.
The oven ready plans were the cheapest and most future proof way of getting a comprehensive network.
There were problems but they were made in paint that can be removed and improved with future funding.
Labour is letting perfect be the enemy of good.
“Measure twice, and cut once.”
In this case the act of measuring is cutting into the cloth.
The delay is costing money and risking further funding when we’re already on thin ice after Labour and Tories ripped out the OSR lane.
Car Delanda Est.
I indicated that there were safety issues already installed with the lane on the A259.
You have a cycle lane on the inside right next to vehicle parking.
There’s little room for a passenger to exit without infringing on the cycle lane, even worse if the passenger needs to use a wheelchair.
Dangerous already for cyclists and car passengers.
Second, those same passengers and disabled then have to cross a live cycle lane to reach the safe pavement, then have to do it again for the second cycle lane.
Is that safe, anyone who says it is is deluded and I can’t in my life work out how this was signed off as being better or safer.
This extension is not safer, disabled, cyclist, pedestrians, bus users alike are all at risk. As you say the ‘CHEAPEST’ and that sums it up, saying it can be improved later with more funding.
No, a typical waste of money attitude that is the downfall of this city.
Lets get it right first time and safe for every body, any future funding can be used for other projects not being wasted correcting a ‘Cheap’ that will do for now scheme.
Not being rude, you seem to be the type who is happy using four sheets of paper instead of using both sides on just two.
Agreed the A259 cycle lane is an absolute mess. It’s done nothing but lose the council money through parking, discriminated against the disabled and actually isn’t very nice to cycle along as it’s now on the road with all the traffic lights where as before it was away from all the junctions so you didn’t have to stop every 2 seconds. From west Street to the end of Hove lawns needs to be ripped up and put back how it was.
As for the OSR cycle lane. Maybe 5% of the city thought this was money well spent so I think it’s safe to say it was money wasted
Currently VG3 will cost the local taxpayer £6m. This will only rise . Given the cost of living crisis we are all suffering, how can BHCC justify this? The majority of people don’t want the roundabout replaced. Any sane person knows this will cause more congestion and pollution. This scheme has been pushed through on the back of Green lies and deception and a wilful desire to suppress democracy.
The only solution is to cancel VG3.
I’d love to see that roundabout replaced
I’d love to see more buses going up and down the seafront
A tram would be a dream to come true
Plus more safe space for pedestrians, cyclists, mobility scooters etc
Sad to see that people are being taken in by the fake ‘climate change disaster’. Still I guess that’s what happens when people don’t want to think for themselves. They follow a narrative built to bully the driver
Climate change is fake?
Sources?
VG3 is a no-brainer. A huge cost to the taxpayer, resulting in more congestion . Or is that what the Council want, so they can introduce a ulez?
Just stop VG3.
ULEZ? Now you’re talking
I’m still struggling with this.
I can see why bike owners like me want on-street storage – when I have to carry my bike up two flights of stairs to hang it on the wall of my modest flat.
But equally I don’t see that my council tax should be given to a private company who then rent out bike hangers that the council have bankrolled. I personally can’t afford one of these bike hangers.
The council get nothing in return, and they lose the parking space revenue. In money terms, that’s a lose-lose situation.
I don’t understand either, why the last Green administration bankrolled the Beryl bike hire company to give us e-bikes, and at £10 per hour! Again, these electric consumer toys do nothing towards helping active travel, are not at all Green, and they are not affordable for commuting – or even for getting home from the pub. And so apparently we have financed yet another private company, at a negative overall cost to the tax payer. Echoes of the i360?
And there’s your black hole in the council finances. The result is that it will be a while before we can pee again in the city centre, with the toilets all closed. (How much would it actually cost, to re-open the Pavilion Gardens toilets, grim as they are? That’s what should be done, like next week. )
I guess the Greens are now a lot happier, in opposition, and moaning from the sidelines, chucking more fake-green ideas over the wall, while taking no responsibility for all the mistakes they themselves budgeted for. All that money spent on planning LTNs and no money left to fill the potholes in the road that affect every road user..
Let’s hope that Labour see sense, not just in budgeting, but in stopping the VG3 project, and the disastrous idea to remove the Palace Pier Roundabout. We can’t actually have a car-free city without there being a new public transport system – like a rapid cross city tram service – so stop dreaming and get real.
Those of us who have to cross the city to get to work – whether by car or by public transport or indeed by bike – are so terrified of these stupid ideas which just are more lose-lose decisions made by privileged people who have city centre office jobs and who seemingly have no sympathy or empathy with most people like me who are struggling financially.
It’s not that we don’t care about the environment or about climate change, it’s just we can’t see the point of these fake-green local decisions, which waste money and actually help nobody.
Billy, totally agree with every word.
You’re out of date on the cost of the Beryl bikes which has come down as per recent announcement, and as was always planned, I believe.
If you think electric bikes are no more than consumer toys, then you’ve probably never tried one.
And are you sure you have your figures right on the scheme being ‘bankrolled’ by the council? It’s supposed to be cost-neutral, and the previous OurBike scheme broadly succeeded along those lines.
600 bikes £13million = £21666 a bike… Do the maths mate, they will never be cost neutral. They actually could have purchased 13000 e bikes for that price, probably more and offered them out for free as part of a scrappage scheme. Lol nope. Buy 600 bikes and make people pay to use them at the same rate as the minimum wage so residents won’t use them, tourists who would otherwise bus or walk will use them…. Unbelievable.
The greens saw the our council bank account and pi$$es it up the wall. It’s really very disrespectful to people who grew up here, work hard, care about the environment and make an effort to recycle to have a political party call themselves green and do everything but be environmentally responsible.
The roads are now so bad they are unsafe to cycle on most of them, how is that environmentally friendly. Those who do drive, drive off roaders because normal small cars get broken on the pot holes. Amazing.
So let’s look at the LTN, how much was wasted devising a scheme that would make people drive nearly a mile more up hills every day. Again not even remotely environmentally friendly.
That’s why they were voted out, because the people of Brighton 90% anyway are not completely stupid.
If drivers insist on being too lazy / selfish to walk, cycle or use public transport, and insist on making everyone else inhale their death gases because they’re just sooo entitled, perhaps a ULEZ *would* be the best deterrent.
Of course, we could also allow the oh so entitled to keep making short, single-person journeys around town in cars, where they are at their most inefficient and most polluting, give it a few more years and the junction between the 23 and 259 will be underwater anyway.
Jack knows you’re alright mate, but what about everyone and everything else?
idiot
This
I’d be surprised to hear anyone who actually lives near the roundabout come out in favour of it.
No Longer A driver.
So getting up at 3am to go to work is lazy is it.
Give me the transport options at 3am that takes me to Ditchling and Chailey, where there’s no Bus or Rail Station, I would also like the transport options for the day time too please.
I’m so sorry I’m selfish not being able to walk to Ditchling. I’ve tried cycling, honesty guv, but my various items that I need, lap top, tool box, various documents, safety equipment and much more kept falling off me bike.
Yes I’m entitled, to decide for myself what my best form of travel is for my desired activity, no bus, no train, cycle not practice and walking impossible. If that makes me selfish, lazy and entitled so what, nothing to do with you and your comments just shows how shallow minded you are.
As for your short trip nonsense, you are aware care workers and others who provide a vital service make short trips across town or round the corner. Saw Tesco’s van, made three deliveries in the same road. Have a word, tell him to stop, get the recipients to drive to the store to collect their shopping, I actually thought making three drops in one van better for the environment than three cars but I must be mistaken.
Yes bring in the ‘ULEZ’, just see how much work you won’t get done because businesses won’t do work inside the zone or cringe at the quote given for entering the zone and the extortionate parking prices. Your choice.
I do some contract work for a company and run my own business and have the luxury to pick and choose who I do business with and charge a completive price. I ‘HAVE’ to use my car because of the equipment and amount of gear I need to take, none of it is acceptable on a bus nor train. I had to go to Central Brighton and then onto Hove, but car parking went up meaning I had to adjust my prices, I took some of the hit but even making a small profit the jobs weren’t worth it and I didn’t renew the contracts.
I won’t do any jobs in Brighton now, cheaper and more profitable going to Lewes, Ditchling and Shoreham.
Yes I’m so lazy working and not sponging off the tax payer, I could be a first class citizen like your good self, sitting at home brain dead thinking only of my own selfish needs making comments about others, because I know each and every one who drives and am so qualified to tell the world those drivers are lazy, selfish, entitled.
When you know the facts as ‘why’ we use our cars, then you can tell us what we are, until then, I highly recommend you STFU you ignorant moron.
Cicely Lloyd, from the Brighton Multicultural Women’s Cycle Club, asked why her group had not been consulted about review.
Because you don’t need to be consulted, that’s why.
She further added, that her members could not afford the bus and used bicycles to get around the city.
And the point of this information?
Good to see all the usual pro-cycling anti-motorist activists moaning, and one complaining they weren’t consulted. If only other road users, residents, and businesses, had been consulted when the LCWIP schemes were formulated?
Yes, the regular discussions they had with former councillor and Sustrans employee Jamie Lloyd to push through “bright ideas” must be over, and now we have a majority Labour council that, hopefully, listens to everyone including cyclists as well as other road users; verifies claims; and doesn’t, like our previous Green rulers, just push ideology and dogma and treat those who disagree with them with utter contempt.
The LCWIP was developed over several years, with rounds of consultation, debates in chamber, and voting on by all parties. Just because you, specifically weren’t asked, it doesn’t mean the greens just made it up.
The latest LCWIP was created by the Greens with support from Labour under the secret coalition agreement (AKA Memorandum of Understanding). There was no input from groups representing residents, businesses, or other road users.
Perhaps time for a total review and this time listening to everyone and not just an echo-chamber of pro-cycling anti-motorist activists?
Except that’s not true. Open consultation started in 2021. With a call for anyone potentially impacted to contact the council, and outreach happened. As for you usual nonsense about anti car folk, stop being silly. Most cyclists I know drive (I only know of one that doesn’t and he lives in Hampshire). Being pro bike doesn’t mean anti car. Stop being so blinkered
Yes – of course we believe you. It’s not as if the Greens have a proven record in ignoring residents, lying and deceiving and fiddling surveys to suit their ends – is it?
Don’t you understand why the Greens got a damn good shoeing at the local election?
Everybody was tired of their lies
The LCWIP was just an echo-chamber run by Davis and Lloyd (Dumb and Dumber)
The greens did make it up though. Lol calling that roundabout one of the most dangerous when actually there was no recording of such statistics is literally making it up.
The greens refused to listen to locals, consultations basically meant putting a poster on a lamp post and hoping people would see it and when they didn’t, going off every word of cycle lobby groups. That is not listening and is not consulting. If they were so confident, they should have put it to a city wide vote there master plan
VG3 is the most bizarre scheme on can imagine, the idea that having cars idle at red lights 24/7, 365 could only be come up with by a true idiot or someone corrupt.
Unnecessary deliberate control of natural traffic flow is the perfect metaphor for the weirdest aspect of the green movement, VG3 has to permanently shelved or the council will lose all respect.
But what if it reduces traffic
Which is what we must do
Prioritise public transport, walking, cycling etc
What have you been smoking?
Mainlining climate emergency news. You?
Lord+Emsworth
It won’t reduce traffic, A259 is a main trunk route East to West, West to East. We have a ferry terminal at Newhaven don’t forget.
Prioritising public transport is great, but doesn’t suit everybody nor does cycling or walking.
The best route to Newhaven is A27/A26 for those just trying to go directly
The majority of car journeys are local. These are the journeys we need to incentivise people to do on foot, bus, bike etc
Well it was until Lewes road was converted into a single carriage way from a dual. Now it’s actually the coast road. The A259 is a major A road. Until a rapid transport network is established from peacehaven though to Shoreham people will drive as the alternative takes hours. Imagine living in peacehaven and working at Shoreham port then having to bus it in lol better off signing on
Even if traffic lights were installed as part of the VG£ plan, many cyclists will still ignore them and ride straight through the red lights. Which is what is happening all over the city.
Hope so,I like a moving target.
Strange how the cycling groups all had questions lined up ready to probe the administration (even on schemes like the A23 which hasn’t been mentioned yet) . Makes you wonder if they are being co ordinated by someone with the transport team who rather than remain a neutral civil servant wants to torpedo the new Labour group.
The people who care about active travel are aware of the schemes that are in the pipeline and care about them happening. But sure, it could be a secret conspiracy.
Hardly a conspiracy, but a co ordinated campaign. Let’s wait and see.
Leftists: [participates in democracy]
The Right: “it’s a conspiracy against us!”
The Transport Dept does have its own agenda – which tends to be contrary to what residents and businesses want. Ask them if they want a city-wide cpz
ust give pedestrians, bus users, cyclists etc safe and pleasant routes.
Saw this headline today…
UN says climate change ‘out of control’ after likely hottest week on record
After record breaking days on Monday and Tuesday, unofficial analysis shows the world may have seen its hottest seven days in a row
It’s an emergency
…and Brighton Council is going to save the world!
Does the evidence base show that improved alternatives to driving correlate with reduced global warming metrics? Or changed habits?
The evidence shows car uses drops dramatically, which means lower emissions (see Paris and Amsterdam case studies)
My wife and I drove from mid sussex to Brighton last evening to enjoy the weather. We parked on the sea front, loads of spaces. We ended up going for a drink and then a meal pretty much on impulse. We are both over 60 and active but could not have cycled the 25 mile round. The station is at the top of a very steep hill plus we’re long way from the station near home, the bus is a 3 hour plus round trip.
If we have to pay ridiculous parking fees and a congestion charge we just won’t go any more. We’ve stopped shopping in brighton already and now go to crawley or online.
So the higher cost of motoring will reduce carbon emissions. However it will decrease revenue. I’m neutral so good luck either way. I want a cleaner world for my grandchildren too but I also want a bit of quality and balance in my life.
By the way the sea front cycle lane was virtually unused and we only saw 1 (yes one) cyclist using the A23 cycle lane from the sea front to the A27.
By the way I grew up in Lancashire where we had a saying “if you can’t see it don’t breath in ”
Okay get the knives out
Why not?
I love it when people claim Paris or Amsterdam as examples of places we could be like. Have they ever visited those cities?
Note that both cities have an underground network, and trams, and express bus routes, along with water buses operating on canals or the Seine. So that’s proper public transport then, working for tourists, locals at leisure, and for commuters.
They also have ring roads and cross city routes for cars and delivery lorries and trader traffic.
Both cities are also relatively flat, making cycle routes easier to achieve.
The cycling lobbyists really need to wind their selfish necks back in when it comes to Brighton. Those of us using vehicles for our work actually have no choice – and I cycle when I can, but that idea is not compatible with any work that I do.
The mis-allocation of limited shared road space is no help with the climate emergency if you just create a gridlocked city with daily traffic jams, and that seems to be the result of the ‘carrot and stick’ ideas of the last few years. It has been so shit for those of us trying to earn a living in difficult times.
The worst thing the Greens did was to duplicate existing cycle lanes with the simple intention of reducing road space for cars and vans and buses – and there’s actually nothing green about causing people to take longer journeys or to sit in non-moving traffic. Nobody actually benefited from the changes, because we already had a cycle lane. The current road layout on Madeira Drive is also a complete joke.
As far as climate change goes, these supposedly-green policies are so fake. Let’s hope that Labour can get the city moving again, provide new public transport routes, and find new ways to encourage visitors and tourism.
Park and ride schemes at the edge of town, to the west, east and north, would be a start. A bicycle-based economy is certainly not the answer – as the Green’s flagship Velo cafe quickly proved.
Please get the lycra lobbyists out of Hove Town hall, and away from the city’s transport decisions. An integrated city-wide travel policy takes on board all interests, and not just the shouting two wheel twits.
Great post.
Yes people always jump on the France and Dutch thing.
Had one actually compare Brighton to London the other day, I’m still waiting for a response when I informed him, London have joined up transport links, one single card the Oyster, that they can travel on Buses, Trains, Tubes and Tram system, how can Brighton come close to that and asked what we had.
“The worst thing the Greens did was to duplicate existing cycle lanes with the simple intention of reducing road space for cars and vans and buses – and there’s actually nothing green about causing people to take longer journeys or to sit in non-moving traffic. Nobody actually benefited from the changes, because we already had a cycle lane. The current road layout on Madeira Drive is also a complete joke.”
Oh, come off it, will you? The existing cycle lane along the seafront dated from the 80s and was nowhere near wide enough for the numbers using it. East of the pier it was positively dangerous, as it took space from the busy prom. The existing arrangement is way better and safer – unless you happen to be a car driver with a massive sense of entitlement.
In many cases (eg Old Shoreham Rd) the roadspace taken wasn’t wide enough for two car widths anyway. Now, there’s an example of a change made from which there were no winners – ripping that lane out in its entirety before it could be evaluated, and losing central government funding as a result. That was Labour and Tories, voting together (like birds of a feather).