Hove Bike Lanes - Again

It gets worse. Last Friday’s Argus had another story quoting Mary Mears. She is reported to have said "Good quality parking space is vital to the continued growth of the local economy, attracting visitors and shoppers to the city to spend their money." What on earth is “good quality parking space”? Whatever it may be, it was not mentioned anywhere in the documentation which proposed removing the bike lanes. And in an era when policy is supposed to be evidence-based, where are the facts to support any of these increasingly spurious claims, particularly those relating to attracting visitors and shoppers to the city to spend their money?  In 2009 I carried out some quick research on the subject of cars and shops for an article I wrote for the Argus. Some of the facts I uncovered: one study found that retailers overestimated the importance of car-borne trade by almost 100% (Councillors weren’t mentioned!); another found that, in London (similar to Brighton, I reckon) shopping and personal business is the largest journey purpose category for walk trips, accounting for 74% of all walk trips; according to another study, the flow of people delivered by different modes of transport on a 3.5m wide road is 12,000 people per hour on a tram, 10,000 people per hour on foot, 6,000 by bike, 5,000 by bus . . . and 1,000 people per hour by car. So I’m looking forward to Cllr Mears taking up the cudgels in support of trams.  In Friday’s Argus report, Mary Mears went on to say, "we want to facilitate sensible car use in the city, not try to prevent it for dogmatic ideological reasons." Which raises the question: which forms of “facilitation” does Cllr. Mears support? And which kind of car use is "sensible"? (Obviously, when I use a car, it's “sensible.” Not like when you use one).  Exactly how do the Grand Avenue bike lanes not “facilitate” car use, sensible or otherwise?  In the general understanding of the word, “evidence” includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. In which case, the proposal to spend £1 million on removing the Grand Avenue bike lanes is currently an evidence-free zone.

Hove Bike Lanes Again: Spurious and More Spurious

Today’s Argus reports on the proposal to remove the Grand Avenue bike lane. But this time, the rationale given by Mary Mears includes not only the line that Tories were “always against” the cycle lane, but that the removal is in response to resident’s safety concerns. Spurious and more spurious, given that, as the Argus reports, the number of accidents and casualties along the relevant stretch has fallen by 20%.  And increasing safety and reducing accidents is not even mentioned in the budget proposal. Again, cited in the Argus, Mary Mears says, “We want to facilitate sensible car use in the city and not try and prevent it for dogmatic ideological reasons.” As if “car use” needs any facilitation. And as for dogma and ideology, this proposal takes the biscuit. Not to mention wasting £1m of our money…

Brighton Festival and Hove Bike Lanes: From The Sublime To The Ridiculous

Last week’s sublime news was that human rights advocate, leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been announced as Guest Director of Brighton Festival 2011. It’s this kind of thing that makes you proud to live in Brighton & Hove – it underlines the city’s status as left-field, open, cutting edge, tolerant, innovative, inclusive, creative, progressive and global: truly, a bold move by the Festival. So much for the sublime. What about the ridiculous? Bring on another of last week’s announcements, this time from Brighton and Hove City Council (BHCC).

Buried in BHCC’s proposed budget (what the Brighton Politics Blogger describes as the Mears Master Plan), is a decision to spend £1.1 million to rip out the cycle lanes in Grand Avenue. These cycle lanes have been controversial from the start, criticised for being installed where it was easy to do so, rather than where there was a clear need. But the work was done, the bike lanes are there, and they seem not to be a problem, except for some of our Conservative councillors, for whom a proper segregated bike lane appears to be an assault on the rights of the motorist. The relevant paragraph, buried in section 3.11 on page 210 of the budget document refers to the need to “improve the visual impact and traffic flow along this important north – south corridor including access to the A27 / A23 from the A259/210 Shoreham Harbour it is proposed to remove the cycle lane along both sides of Grand Avenue and The Drive. An indicative cost of removing the lanes including changes to the signalling is £1.1m to be funded by a further topslice from LTP grant…..(although) detailed costings have yet to be undertaken and any residual funds would be given back to the LTP. There is a low risk that up to £0.3m grant funding may need to be repaid.”
Talk about spurious justification! Whilst the cycle lane is under-used, I have never noticed any problems with traffic flow in Grand Avenue. As Green Transport spokesperson Cllr Ian Davey said,  “It is only 3 years since this same Conservative administration spent over half a million pounds of public money on installing the cycle lanes. Now they plan to spend more than twice as much taking it out. To make matters worse, they may well have to give back the £0.3million that they were given by the government to pay for the lane in the first place. How mad is that?” Mad indeed. As if that wasn’t mad enough, the council also plans to spend £4.5 million on doing up car parks. So thumbs up to Brighton Festival. And thumbs down to Brighton and Hove’s Conservative politicians for proposing something that looks set to achieve a rare combination of outcomes: expensive, money-wasting, pettifogging, and doctrinaire. In other words, the opposite of the Brighton Festival - perhaps it’s time to put the Festival team in charge of the city’s transport policy?

Brighton: Bikes in the Buff and Naked Hypocrisy

Yesterday’s Naked Bike Ride saw around 1,000 participants of all shapes and sizes (and that was just the bikes) thronging the streets of the city. It probably wasn’t the kind of demonstration that the Department for Transport had in mind when Brighton was named as one of its Cycle Demonstration Cities. Now, there’s practically an A to Z of Naked Bike rides around the world, with around 100 cities taking part. But although the event has run in Brighton for four years without incident, 2010 has seen the Conservative Leader of Brighton and Hove Council, Mary Mears, complaining to the police that the ride is indecent, “will lower the tone of the city, cause offence and damage our reputation with visitors.”  Is this really the same city which proudly announced an official nudist beach, Britain’s first at a major resort, over thirty years ago? As a supporter/spectator at yesterday’s event, I saw a lot of flesh on two wheels, but not much in the way of bystander outrage, offence or damage - mostly amusement, a lot of honked horns, and a fair-few dropping jaws. The organisers say that the Naked Bike Ride is a celebration of cycling, of body power and of streets for people. It is a protest against the domination of our towns and cities by cars and the destructive effects of car culture and oil dependency which threaten our health, our communities, our local environment and global ecology. It’s a celebration of the bicycle and of the power and individuality of the human body, as well as a demonstration (that word again!) of the vulnerability of the cyclist in traffic. With participants invited to ride “as bare as you dare,” the bike ride points towards a vision of a car-free city (in which nudity is presumably optional!). If you can’t ride a bike naked in Brighton once a year, where can you?