ePetition - Remove the Old Shoreham Road from the local cycling plan and do not build any cycling infrastructure along this route

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.

This ePetition ran from 15/11/2021 to 06/04/2022 and has now finished.

2186 people signed this ePetition.