Revival for 'crucial cycle lane' as Old Shoreham Road Cycle Lane Scheme receives £330k funding from Sustrans

OSR planning story starts Nov 2009

3 August 2011. Brighton and Hove City Council announced today that it will revive the "crucial cycle lane" once planned for the Old Shoreham Road (OSR) - and scrapped by the previous Conservative council administration.

This is a special moment for cycle campaigners, and for the author of this blog, since the changes in spec, safety worries, and eventual scrapping of the 'OSR' scheme sparked interest in the campaign for sustainable transport in Brighton and Hove in 2009.

A council spokesperson said today: "A safe cycle route could now be built along part of one of Brighton & Hove's busiest roads. The city council has won £330,000 from the sustainable transport charity Sustrans to help develop a 1.5 km route along the Old Shoreham Road from the BHASVIC junction on Dyke Road to The Drive. Sustrans' 'Links to Schools' cash would be added to £125,000 of council funds to complete most of the work by March 2012.

"Lanes on either side of the road will have low kerbs to physically separate motor vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians. No parking spaces will be lost under the plan. Two busy junctions on the route will also get safety improvements for pedestrians and cycles. Councillors believe the new lanes would fill a vital missing link in the local cycle network, particularly from the seafront in Hove to the Seven Dials area.

"Previous surveys of residents along the road, which carries up to 27,000 vehicles a day, have shown 66 per cent favour a dedicated cycle route."

Cabinet councillor for Transport and Public Realm Ian Davey said: "This shows the council meeting manifesto commitments to improve cycling facilities. Where we build cycle lanes we want them to be excellent, user-friendly and safe lanes which link to existing routes and facilities and really improve everyone's experience of moving around the city by bike.

"This is a crucial east-west route across the city but traffic speed and volume can make it an uncomfortable place for cyclists and pedestrians. The proposed scheme will make Old Shoreham Road safer for everyone including young people using the many nearby schools.

"When the Grand Avenue cycle lane was threatened last year there was a huge petition asking for the council to extend, rather than reduce, cycle facilities. This is our positive response."

A new consultation will now be undertaken before any work starts, subject to official cabinet member approval on August 17.

The council spokesperson added: 'The scheme is being reprieved by the new administration after councillors shelved the idea last year."

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the systematic destruction - by the Conservative administration - of plans to transform Brighton and Hove into a cycling city, or more accurately, into a sustainable transport city. These plans were the basis of the Cycle Town grants made to the city from 2005 by Cycling England. The Old Shoreham Road (OSR) Cycle Lane was the backbone of the scheme, providing a safe cycling link between the town centres of Brighton, Hove and Portslade. In 2009, the city planners under Conservative leadership removed segregated cycle lanes from the OSR plans and then found the scheme to be unsafe - and cancelled it. After that they cancelled the Marine Parade cycle lane scheme, and finally tried to rip up the one part of the scheme already installed - The Drive. Public protests, a big media campaign, and a huge swing at the May local elections saw the Tories lose half their seats, and the Greens gain power in the council.


Stuart Croucher, a member of the team who designed the original scheme, made an impassioned plea for the reinstatement of the scheme, and a powerful argument in favour of a network of segregated cycle lanes for young people and learners, in an interview he gave to this blog last year.

The original plans - and the 'crucial' part played by OSR cycle lane - are all shown in another entry on this blog.

Good news from the DfT - more money for cycle town projects after Cycling England is dead

Some £836,000 was granted by the DfT on March 21 to "chosen cycle town projects" and railways as a sort of one-off grant to improve cycling - in the last moments of Cycling England which finally ceases to exist on 1 April.

On the UK Parliament website, Norman Baker says he is granting the money "to implement a number of small sustainable projects in the cycle towns and, separately, for three train operating companies to enhance their bike and rail schemes."

Very mysterious and in contradiction to the idea that all Cycle Town projects will cease on April 1.

"The chosen cycle town projects - Blackpool, Bristol, Cambridge, Colchester, Darlington, Derby, Exeter, Leighton Linslade, South Gloucestershire, Southend, Shrewsbury, Woking and York - have been assessed as capable of being delivered within the current financial year while offering value-for-money"

Brighton and Hove was not on the list.

The announcement continues: "This is in addition to our recently launched local sustainable transport fund which allows local authorities to bid for a share of £560 million over four years, aimed at encouraging sustainable transport solutions, including cycling initiatives, that will create economic growth and cut carbon.

"This additional funding demonstrates the Government's continued commitment to cycling, recognising their potential contribution to reducing carbon emissions, improving health and creating economic growth.

Link to Parliament website for more info

OPINION: Will Brighton & Hove get away with scrapping the cycling dream and keeping the money?

Clock Tower Approaches

Audit and evaluation of The Cycle Demonstration Town by the seaside

Cycling England is set to close on March 31. But there may yet be a few twitches from the corpse of the body that was supposed to promote cycling in England. After it closes, the work of the monitoring and evaluating the work done in Cycle Cities and Towns, funded by Cycling England grants, will continue for some time.

So we’ve yet to hear the reports of what happened to Brighton and Hove’s Cycle Town scheme, where key components were scrapped.

Despite its apparent commitment to being a Cycling Town (link below), Brighton and Hove, where I live, is in the grip of a minority Tory council administration which in January declared its intention to “repeal” the city’s decade long commitment to promoting sustainable transport, and instead to combat “unfair penalisation of car drivers”.

Over the last year or so, the council has cancelled key elements in the plan for a network of protected cycle lanes that lay at the heart of the Cycling Demonstration Town scheme. The scheme was paid for by Cycling England grants and cost around of £4.5 million including partial grant matching from the city.

In February the Conservatives proposed a budget including plans to demolish The Drive Cycle Freeway in February - which cuts across the driveways of Tory heartland in Hove. Council Leader Mary Mears she said there were no fears the council would have to refund the money to Cycling England because “that quango is about to be abolished.”

Of course Mary Mears is mistaken. She will have to account for it because it is public money. But since her council now no longer has to answer to a “Non Departmental Public Body” like Cycling England, but rather to the Department of Transport under the political control of Liberal Democrat MP for the nearby town of Lewes, Secretary of State Norman Baker, one wonders whether the evaluation procedures applied will be as rigorous as they might have been when Cycling England was alive.

Cyclists in Brighton and Hove are incensed by the apparent diversion of resources intended for a cycling infrastructure that was supposed to encourage thousands of school children to cycle to school. Where are the protected cycle lanes planned for Old Shoreham Road and London Road? Where are The Drive’s safe interchanges and connections with the north of the city and the South Down’s National Park?

We draw scant comfort from the fact that the Department will continue to fund Bikeability (cycle training for children) for four years from 2011 – 2015, and to fund safe routes to school and Bike Club in 2011/12. These programmes encourage children to cycle to school, but I know from cycling The Old Shoreham Road myself that this is asking for trouble when there are no safe cycling lanes. Kids are forced to cycle along the pavement because it is too dangerous along the road. And cycle casualties are increasing in the city.

The council has cancelled the important backbone of protected cycle freeways, and instead painted white lines on the road or designated cycle lanes on peripheral routes, such as Madeira Drive, which is actually closed during peak summer periods. (more>>>)

Vision vs reality: what was original Cycle Demonstration Town plan for Brighton & Hove?

I was sent a diagram of the original proposal, from which I produced the above:
Map showing the original Cycle Demonstration Town Cycle network as envisaged in 2005, superimposed over a 2011 map of cycle lanes supplied by the council. This is a work in progress, I will be adding refinements including the location of the intended segregated freeway sections.

For now: The cycle freeway elements were intended to be:
* the seafront
* the drive
* the old shoreham road
* the valley gardens (as part of proposals now scrapped) roughly from the seafront to london road