1. Purpose of the report and policy context

1.1 Under the Council’s Petition Scheme if a petition contains more than 1,250 signatures and is not petition requesting officer evidence, it will be debated by the full Council.

1.2 The e-petition has resulted in triggering a debate at the council meeting, having exceeded the threshold with a total of 1,625 signatures confirmed at the time of printing the report.

2. Recommendations

2.1 That the petition is noted and referred to the Environment, Transport & Sustainability Committee meeting for consideration.

3. Context and background information

3.1 The Petition:

We the undersigned petition Brighton & Hove Council to Remove the Old Shoreham Road from the local cycling plan with immediate effect - and agree not to plan any cycling infrastructure along the route. The 16-month failure of the experimental, underused temporary cycle lane should be enough data for everyone to say that this doesn’t and will never work.

Lead petitioner – Jeremey Horne

Additional information

Brighton and Hove city council have recently completed a consultation on their Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan, which includes priority cycle routes across the city – one of which is along the Old Shoreham Road.

As everyone in the city will know, a temporary cycle lane was installed along the Old Shoreham Road in May 2020 between The Drive and Hangleton Road, as an experimental traffic order due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The cycle lane failed.

The data from the consultation in early 2021 was damming and thus, 15 months later, in August 2021, following an urgent meeting of the Environment, Transport and Sustainability committee, it was agreed that the temporary cycle lane would be removed. This work was completed just over a month later. To cite some of the consultation data:

• In a manual survey conducted in June 2021, the council saw a 23% decrease in cycling – not just in comparison to before installation – but in comparison to a five-year-old figure from 2016 – yet they had the audacity to blame this on “poor weather conditions”

• 91% of all consultation comments regarding the cycle lane were negative

• The consultation cites that the cycle lane did not cause congestion; yet provides no evidence to support this claim – indeed, despite several requests, the council have never supplied this evidence either

• Conversely to the above, there is substantial video evidence of increased congestion and longer traffic queues during the period the cycle lane was in place – and videos of zero congestion post removal

Indeed, following the removal, a group of local parents have set up a “bike train” along the Old Shoreham Road to get the “thousands” of children that used the cycle lane to school. A grand total of a five children (maximum) have been counted on the opening runs - and additionally, the organisers only run the “train” once a week due to lack of demand, thus proving (as we all knew), that Children never used it in their droves (as many activists would have liked us to believe) and that there are better ways of setting up cycling infrastructure for those that do want it, rather than implementing permanent lane closures. Moreover, the behaviour of activists continues to damage our city, with many of them failing to accept the removal of the cycle lane or indeed it’s failure. This is ruining our city by exacerbating an already tense relationship (or “war”) between cyclists and motorists. People need to move on, accept that the experimental cycle lane was a failure and look at better options for active travel.

4. Procedure

4.1 The petition will be debated at the Council meeting in accordance with the agreed protocol:

(i) The Lead petitioner will be invited by the mayor to present the petition and will have up to 3 minutes in which to outline the prayer of the petition and confirm the number of signatures;

(ii) The mayor will then open the matter up for debate by councillors for period of 15 minutes and will first call on the relevant Committee Chair to respond to the petition and move a proposed response. The mayor will then call on those councillors who have indicated a desire to speak in the matter, before calling on the relevant Committee Chair to respond to the debate;

(iii) An amendment to the recommendation in paragraph 2.1 of the report or to add additional recommendations should be submitted by 10.00am on the day of the meeting; otherwise, it will be subject to the mayor’s discretion as to being appropriate. Any such amendment will need to be formally moved and seconded at the meeting;

(iv) After the 15 minutes set aside for the debate, the mayor will then formally put:

(a) Any amendments in the order in which they are moved, and

(b) The substantive recommendation(s) as amended (if amended).