Plan to ban cars from Brighton's town centre is being considered by the city council who say the "old town" was "not designed for cars"

View of Bond Street in North Laine's warren - "not designed" for cars (pic Google)

Brighton and Hove city council is considering banning or reducing numbers of non-essential motor cars from the "Old Town" centre, which remains the heart of the city. Sustainable transport options are being improved throughout the city, although this latest move has been announced as a tourism and business promotion.

A press release issued Tuesday 22 May 2012 announced: "Proposals to make the Old Town area of Brighton a more attractive destination and better environment for business are now on display."

Option A would restrict vehicles from accessing any of the Old Town unless they have a specific reason for being there, for example they are delivering to a business, are a resident, parking for shopping, taxi or an emergency service.

Option B would allow vehicles to continue to come into the area with overall vehicle flow reduced by using restrictions designed to deter through traffic. In addition the section of Prince Albert Street between Black Lion Street and Ship Street would become traffic-free, and East Street would become an 'access only' area.

If agreed, the improvement scheme could start January 2013.

Councillor Ian Davey, chair of the city's transport committee, said: "The Old Town is one of the oldest and most popular areas in the city and part of its appeal is the quirky, narrow streets which people love to wander around. We want to explore ways of improving the area for everyone to enjoy, while allowing essential users to still have access. We are responding to requests to make improvements here and we'll be working with the community to find the best solution. The consultation results will be reported to a future Transport Committee meeting."

A council spokesperson said: "The Old Town's narrow streets were not designed for the high volume of 'through' traffic now travelling through them. Originally the heart of the old fishing town of Brighthelmstone, the Old Town has developed since the 13th century and retains its original street pattern.

"This is the next phase of making the Old Town, which includes the historic Lanes, more accessible for those who enjoy the area and wander through it to the seafront. The scheme has already put in improvements from Middle Street to Black Lion Street and extended it along to East Street. Work was completed ahead of the busy tourist season. An important aim of making infrastructure improvements to the area is to maximise the potential of one the city's historic centres for local businesses by making it more attractive and comfortable for visitors.

"Residents, businesses and visitors can view the two new proposals to further improve the Old Town for the hundreds of thousands of people that live, work and visit in the area every year"

There will be an unstaffed exhibition in the foyer of Bartholomew House from 23 May to 29 June and staffed exhibitions at the Friend's Meeting House in Ship Street on Thursday 14 June, 12 noon–8pm and Saturday 16 June, 9am–5pm and at Bartholomew House, Bartholomew Square, Thursday, 28 June, 8.45am–4.45pm.

Related information and links
View the details online and complete the questionnaire
Information and questionnaires will be sent to residents and businesses in the Old Town.
The Old Town is the area bounded by East Street, North Street, West Street and the sea which forms the historic core of Brighton.
The Old Town is most well-known for The Lanes, and intricate maze of twisting alleyways.
Latest proposals on view to improve Brighton's Old Town

A 'greenprint' for sustainable transport

In February this year I joined the campaign to save cycle lanes in Brighton and Hove. I discovered I had touched on a complex, hidden issue that affects our lives profoundly – transport planning. This article is an overview of what might be done to promote sustainable transport in Brighton and Hove – a city that went on to elect the UK’s first Green-led council in May. In a time of financial cutbacks what is achievable in the short term, and what we can aim for in the longer term? Some ideas in this article appear in the Green Party manifesto, and some in Brighton and Hove's Local Transport Plan – but this article is entirely my own opinion. By Russell Honeyman, 31 August 2011

1. Sustainable Transport – the best choice for health and environment

Given the choice, most people would choose clean, comfortable transport that gets them where they want to go quickly.

The reality in most UK cities is that private cars choke the streets, slowing journey times, creating air pollution and making it dangerous for other road users.

The private car has become a safe and convenient choice because our city planners have made it so.

Many European cities have a different approach, offering a choice of:
• fast, efficient public transport (train, bus or tram),
• safe attractive walking and cycling, or
• cars with reduced priority (or electric cars).

Most people welcome this choice, and all the UK’s major political parties are now committed to sustainable transport – at least in principle.

But a fundamental change in city planning is required to undo decades of planning that prioritised car use. Such a fundamental redesign of our cities would need substantial funding, as the problematic Edinburgh Tram scheme shows.

There are options that don't cost much but will make a big difference. Some short-term options that don’t require major capital funding:
• 20mph speed limits - (without humps and bumps) in the city centre and residential areas to improve safety and reduce congestion by improving traffic flow. A 20mph limit will save lives, reduce traffic and encourage walking, cycling and use of public transport.
• Working with communities - to promote safer streets, expansion of car clubs, on-street cycle parking, and a ring-fenced fund for communities to make local environmental improvements.
• A better choice of transport - make it easier and safer to get around the city using public transport, cycling, walking or car. When more people choose sustainable transport, congestion will reduce. Options include 'non-stop' rapid transit buses on key routes, safe cycling and walking routes, and improving public spaces.

Even in this financial climate investment for capital projects can be raised from financial markets. Edinburgh raised £550m for its troubled tram scheme. Yes, these schemes are problematic - always seeming to need more funds than expected – but challenges can be overcome with focus. They may become crippling if we try to prioritise cars at the same time as promoting sustainable transport.

In the longer term planners would redesign the city, taking the heart of the city to take back the public realm from vehicles, and evaluate options to provide a low emission, fast and affordable public transport system. Make sustainable transport the option of choice – and people will happily choose that option.

2. Means and Ends: Policy thinking

Elected councillors need to empower the council planners to research, propose and deliver real choice in sustainable transport. The end result is not yet known, but we need to start with clear policy guidelines.

2.1. The Ends: Long term goals

A city planned around sustainable transport:
• Gives people the choice: walk, cycle, use decent public transport, or a car
• Improves the experience of remaining trips made by car, by reducing traffic and freeing space for travel and parking
• Eventually makes sustainable transport the best choice
• Improves peoples health by making clean air and exercise easy to access
• Gives people space for parks and recreation by reclaiming space from cars
• Has mixed developments of homes and services so people need to travel less
• Consumes less energy and raw materials and produces less waste including CO2, ultimately becoming self-sustaining.

2.2. The Means: how we’ll get there

Policies and priorities that might guide change in the city and achieve sustainable transport for all.

Policy Guidelines for the City Council
• Consider a public transport options, including a network powered by electricity. Many people see a citywide network of electric trams or buses as providing the ultimate solution to all our problems of sustainability, air pollution and public transport. Several UK cities are considering this option and it was on the agenda of Brighton’s planners in the Local Transport Plan LTP2.
• Consider re-regulation of bus services to provide service and cost benefits.
• Improve Air Quality to match European and domestic targets.
• Make streets safer to encourage recreation, walking and cycling and reduce casualties.
• Improve the “public realm” (public spaces) by diverting heavy traffic and converting space to parks and other shared spaces.
• Increase the proportion of trips made by walking and cycling.

Priorities: projects we could aim to achieve in 2011-2015
• First priorities for Brighton and Hove
- 20mph limit across the city
- Public bike hire scheme
-  Improve accessibility: a core network of safe cycle and walking routes, eg. to University and SNDP.

• Public realm improvements:
- Reducing car dominance, improving environment: Brighton Station Gateway, Brighton Old Town, Valley Gardens, Preston Circus.
- Improvement of streets: reduce clutter, increase places to sit,
- Implement Home Zones in residential areas,
- Extend residents parking, both for cars and street cycle parking.

• Sustainable and Public transport
- Examine and recommend options for public transport network
- Trialling hybrid buses
- Introduction of a version of the Oyster Card (the “Key Card” is now in planning for our city)
- Promotion of ‘smarter’ choices: car clubs and electric vehicles
- Rapid Transit on key routes linking places across the city and Sussex, including the Coastal Transport Scheme.
- Focus on schools biking and walking projects.

• Funding ideas:
- Allocate 20% of transport budget to walking and cycling
- Ring-fence some parking revenue for transport, community projects
- Workplace parking charges.

With no money in the budget, can policy alone achieve Sustainable Transport in Brighton and Hove

heroknight.blogspot.com

On Thursday (21 May) the UK's first Green council administration was voted into power by a full meeting of the city council in Brighton and Hove. The council officers are said to be overjoyed to be working with a Green administration and bursting with ideas of how to implement the local Green manifesto. How exciting, you might think, now we can put all those sustainable transport plans into action? Not quite. There is no money at all for new capital projects in the council's Transport budget, so this rules out infrastructural changes.

But not everything needs money. Significant change might be achieved through policy decisions alone. I've been chatting to activists, consultants and councillors about what can be done. Above all, what the city needs is a detailed sustainable transport plan. Some policy changes might be effective in the short term:

1. 20 mph default across the city. Signage is expensive, and planning is needed, eg where higher speeds are needed. But on the face of it, 20mph default should cost almost nothing.Some big signs as you enter the city, possibly enforced by sub-contracted commission-paid officers presently engaged in parking ticketing. 20 mph will make other transport options more attractive by slowing traffic - and if people use other transport options, traffic will be less and journey times may even end up being shorter - even by car. We can visit Portsmouth and ask them how they did it.

2. Planning suburban traffic around 'semi permeable cells'. Suburban areas can be planned so 'rat-run' type traffic speeding through residential roads (and endangering children) is blocked. This is done by 'semi permeable' barriers such as one-way streets and bollards, creating cells with limited access to cars but open to walkers, cyclists and public transport. Cars can only enter via a few roads. Cells are linked by traffic arteries. So if you want to travel by car from suburb to neighbouring suburb, you need to drive out of your cell onto a connecting road (such as a ringroad) and back into the neighbouring cell. In Dutch cities this type of planning means that short journeys are much more convenient by foot, or cycle or public transport.

3. Speed up bus transport. We need rapid buses on strategic routes. It is ridiculous that it takes an hour to travel from Aldrington to Hollingbury or Falmer by bus - but 15 minutes by car or taxi. Brighton's main bus company is a near-monopoly that runs huge buses on centralised routes that suit them. Encourage more independent bus services to bid for routes that communities help to plan. Set up a council-led community bus service so that a self sustaining community service can evolve. Policy decision and encouragement may be all that is needed here.

4. Invest in planning. The budget inherited from the Tories allocates £4.5m to improving car parks. This can be put off for a little while. Invest the money into making a unified transport plan for the city. Maybe we won't need these car parks in these places if we do a proper plan.

5. Look at best practice. Let's talk to the Dutch. We may even find the EU will help pay for consultation with people who have already made sustainable transport work. EU funding is allocated to Brighton and Hove for sustainable transport - this was used to pay for the cycle counters installed last year. Better to use this money for planning than for cycle counters.

6. Central Government has set up a £560million Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF). Brighton and Hove applied for grant funding from this, during the previous Tory administration. But the proposal involved scant community consultation and I have not yet seen it - I'm hoping to soon. It is said to involve the Lewes Road corridor, which has issues of heavy traffic, poor air quality and a dangerous cycle route.

Background

When voters reacted against the Labour government and let a Tory minority administration take power in 2007, the city suffered four years of mean spirited self interest that clearly saw sustainable development as a threat to the Tory way of life - especially the right to drive and park cars everywhere. The Tories leaned on the city's planners, and tore the heart out of the city's sustainable transport plans by cancelling the core elements of it, for example the city centre Valley Gardens project, Old Shoreham Road cycle freeway and Marine Parade cycle lane. In January 2011 they actually tried to repeal the council's commitment to sustainable transport.


Tory admin was voted out of power in the 5 May local elections, and the voters have entrusted the city to a new group of Green councillors. But the period of freely available funds is over. We will long regret the damage done to our city by the Tory failure to take the golden opportunity during the decade of unfettered funding.

The budget inherited by the Green administration from the Tories imposes £23million of cuts on the council. This is due to cuts in funding from central government. More cuts are indicated in future years?

Mostost: new word for a new world

In the beginning was the word

I've been writing a lot of words about sustainable transport. "Modal shift toward sustainable transport", to be precise. This phrase sums up the policy goal of getting large numbers of people to choose to walk or cycle more often - to use more sustainable transport methods. Also included in these transport methods are electric cars and public transport, because they are thought to be more sustainable than the motor car, since they reduce the carbon emissions per trip per person. Though of course they are not the purists' choice .... 

Anyway, I'm finding that I use the phrase "Modal shift toward sustainable transport" quite a lot. I've been struggling with it. I long for an alternative, something short and pithy. I've tried shortening it to "Modal Shift", which sort of works but begs the question of where to in every use, or just "Sustainable Transport" but that's simply not right when we're trying to talk about how to encourage people to that goal.

So what about an acronym. MOdal Shift TOward Sustainable Transport. MOSTOST.

It would be an abstract noun - a thing which cannot be seen or touched, like "goal".

"We're committed to Mostost", "Council pays lip service to Mostost", "Mostost the answer to the oil crisis". Does it work for you?

"Mostost" is my invention and I claim it in the name of the future green world.

The Evidence: the Conservative plan to reverse sustainable transport in favour of the car

Agenda Item 72(b) Conservative

Many people have responded to my postings off this site with bafflement (Guardian story). Why would any administration want to demolish a world class cycle freeway, flagship of an award winning sustainable transport policy in progressive Brighton and Hove? The uncomfortable answer is contained in a council motion which never saw the light of day - because it was withdrawn in the face of combined Labour and Green opposition on the council. It is Council Agenda Item 72(b) 27 January 2011.

People ask if there is another side to this story, something I haven't told them. I tried to to get the council, or the leadership, to supply evidence of need to close the lane, but they declined (see my story Rubbing Salt in the Wound, below). A Green spokesman says there is no public consultation, traffic demand or other needs assessment. Some residents are concerned about driveways crossing the cycle lane, but these are countered by supporters of the lane. Some say a survey was conducted but this has not been made public. So we are left presuming that we are dealing with a political ideology (out of sync with national Tory pro-sustainable policy) or simply the personal preference and convenience of a small group of conservative councillors whose party won only 37% of the vote in 2007 local elections. But I'm repeating myself.

To the evidence. Over the past year cancellation of cycling schemes could be explained away by lack of money and safety concerns over watered down specs. (The strategic Old Shoreham Road Cycle Freeway scheme and cancellation of the Grand Parade National Cycle Network link). But these didn't necessarily amount to evidence of hostility to sustainable transport and cycling. Yes, I'm coming to that

In January 2011, the Tory admin put a motion to council that would effectively reverse the 11-year-old Local Transport Plan that committed Brighton and Hove to achieve a shift toward 'sustainable transport' - a policy that would improve public transport, cycling and walking facilities, improve the unban environment and promote electric transport. I have a copy of that motion, and I include the link below. Greens and Labour combined to vote the motion down. But the language of Council Agenda Item 72(b) is worth noting:

1. Rule out introducing any further measures which unfairly penalise car drivers under the guise of promoting "sustainable transport".
2. At the earliest opportunity, repeal the provisions in policy CP8 of the Core Strategy (sustainable transport) which promote "car free housing", "fiscal measures" and "modal shift".

If we are repealing the commitment toward promoting modal shift, we are ending moves to get people to change the way they travel. OK, here it is.
Click for Link to Agenda Item 72(b) Conservative Motion 'Promote Choice...
The motion was withdrawn when the Conservatives saw the amendments proposed by thhe Green/Labour opposition
Click for Link to Agenda item 729b) Labour/Green Party amendments.