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news
Old Shoreham Road Bike Train via Instagram.PNGParents set up ‘bike train’ for school run after council rips out bike lane (+ video)
Parents in Hove, East Sussex, have set up a ‘bike train’ to get their kids to school safely after Brighton & Hove City Council removed a temporary protected cycle lane.
They are also petitioning for a bike lane to be installed on Old Shoreham Road, where the lane installed last year was removed, but are calling for better planning to make it less “contentious” with other road users.
The bike train runs each Friday morning at 8.35am from Boundary Road to the Bilingual Primary School in Hove for a 9.00am arrival, reports The Argus.
Ben Kelly, a parent of children at school who helped set up the bike train said: “It’s one hundred percent in response to the bike lane being taken out.
“We had only just started using that route whilst it was still a temporary route to get to school because we wanted to reduce our car journeys.
“Using that road is a lot more dangerous when you don’t have a cycle lane there. Cars whiz past at speed and in volume. It was not a nice journey in comparison.
“We thought we’d do a bike train to get safety in numbers, what we basically do is ride two abreast, take up the whole lane and cars can then drive around us.
“They take a more considered manoeuvre around us than if we were just single file,” he continued.
In terms of future infrastructure, he said the group is calling for “Just something better planned, I can see why it was contentious with motorists.
“I have a car myself, I’m a motorist and a cyclist,” he added. “I can see where it’s frustrating but the sheer number of cars is a problem.”
The petition, which you can sign here, reads:
We the undersigned petition Brighton & Hove Council to install well-planned and high-quality permanent cycle lanes on the Old Shoreham Road so that we and thousands of other residents have the option of getting around by bike. We’re a group of parents and children who used the Old Shoreham Road to get to school, work and leisure activities. We want our children to be able to cycle to school as it’s good for their physical and mental health, it gives them independence, saves time and money and keeps down emissions. We’d also like delivery riders and commuters to get around without risking their lives. This can only happen if the roads are safe. New government policy says ‘cyclists must be physically separated from high volume motor traffic,’ which means protected lanes on roads like the Old Shoreham Road. We want a fast and direct route, as the policy describes.
Temporary cycle lanes allowed us and our children to travel safely for a while, but now they’ve been removed, we have to drive, take the bus or brave terrifying traffic by bike. Our children have less freedom and we have fewer transport options.
Forty percent of households in the city don’t have a car, and that number is even lower for young people. We all need safe, cheap, efficient transport.
We’d like our local politicians to take everyone’s well-being seriously, no matter how they get around. We need them to make cycling possible by making it safe.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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15 comments
The problem is that we have the wrong people elected on the Council.
A demand for dismissal of the Councillors would be more appropriate.
A fine illustration of why the highway code (and law) really ought to stipulate that drivers change lanes to overtake cyclists just as they would motorists. Instead we have this fudge which builds on the underlying assumption that cyclists are not accorded the same legitimacy on the road as motorists, that their presence is to be tolerated only in so far as they don't get in the way of motorists, that they must not take up road space that could more properly be used by motorists - in other words literally marginalised, and thereby endagered.
Exactly, I thought that Mr Kelly's statement hit the nail on the head. Chapeau
Seems to me that another way of doing this would be, I don't know, maybe put cones or wands up and 'segregate' a lane to be used just by the cyclists. I'm amazed that the council didn't think of this...
Stalinist....
We do appear to have reached a point in this country where, if the choice, is:
1. Put cyclists' lives in danger
2. Make things slightly less convenient for drivers
Number 1 always wins.
To my mind it comes down partly to economics too:
a) Building cycling infrastructure and reducing road deaths (along with other benefits) is often calculated as being cheaper than not doing so.
b) ...but for people (read "authorities" to start with) to act they've got to get some benefit. This could be direct-
bribesdonations and support from the companies who benefit from the political choice. Or it could be ensuring you've got a few non-executive directorships waiting for you when you take off the crown or maybe just doing well by your pals on those companies. Furthest link is that your vote-gatherers / aspirants see a positive economic benefit to themselves.c) Sadly I just don't think there's enough potential slush money (or "influence to be gained" if you want to bowldlerize) from doing the cycling and active travel thing - because the whole point is this is a less costly way of doing things. (Crudely bungs the bike industry can throw you << bungs the car, haulage and fuel industries can).
Basically in human / political terms there *is* a difference between a pound saved and a pound earned - the latter policy tends to win.
Another dimension - which also has an economic side - is that cycling is inherently decentralised once you've made some suitable surfaces to ride on *. One person, one bike, right? Motor vehicles are also "individual" in that sense but they're some orders of magnitude more resource intensive. So companies / organisations concerned with them tend to be bigger, there are fewer of them and so they have more clout.
* I'd have thought this could be spun positively by all hues of the political spectrum. Eg. on the right: "private individual mobility", on the left: "affordable technology for ordinary people", greens / localists: "low impact local transport" and generally: "don't be beholden to industrial monopolies". Seems that bicyclists are such a bugbear they mostly take an opposite view...
You know The Man puts chips in those e-bikes, right?
No - so if I get one I won't need to stop for the cafe?
I somewhat disagree. Not with your analysis of the choice, but there has been a change in the last decade or two: that the question is even raised. Go back to the 1990s and before, and there was no consideration of danger or inconvenience to cyclists, pedestrians, bus users, anyone other than car occupants.
Surely the parents deserved stars too?
In general bike lanes will never get put in where the goal is to increase safety or make the journey easier for cyclists, because most councillors are car drivers. Instead the campaigning effort needs to be along the lines of reducing the number of cyclists "clogging up the roads", and if one way of doing this (besides just squishing them under HGVs) is to build a segregated bike lane, so be it.
This is becoming popular in Spain too.
I think this is one of my favourite videos at the moment.
https://twitter.com/adamtranter/status/1449311777309741063
Yes. I find it annoying that a police escort is even necessary for a group of kids.