Traffic

Three of the four main parties are willing to consider congestion charging as a way of controlling traffic. The Tories are opposed. 'The council is relying too much on trying to keep cars out,' Conservative group leader Brian Oxley has said (Leader, p9, incorrectly dated Thursday 20 April*).

Clearly the council's policy, as characterised by Mr Oxley, is failing, as the queues of traffic in London Road attest. On some recent days vehicles have been slow-moving all the way from Hassocks, according to bus drivers who were running over half an hour late. Despite the benefit of bus lanes, the 5/5A route can take 45-60 minutes to get from Withdean Park to Western Road (scheduled time 23 minutes). This is only partly caused by the westbound closure of North Street, as the delays occur long before there. The closure of the short bus lane to the east of the war memorial gardens in Old Steine was a shortsighted step; some routes could have continued to use it, instead of requiring all buses to negotiate the main stretch of Old Steine and line up to get to the stop between St James's Street and the seafront. Who decides these things, temporary though they may be? (Temporary in this case means around nine months.)

Brighton did not develop in a way that makes traffic management easy. But allowing cars to have priority over pedestrians and public transport is not the way forward. It's local politicians, working with council staff, who have to find and implement solutions. Who knows, maybe the public has good ideas. So, the Conservatives need to come up with a better idea than congestion charging, if there is one.

Note to self: write something about public consultations.

*The rest of the pages are OK. Editors notice these things, as that is likely to be one of the first errors they fail to spot as trainees. I know. I was that trainee. But I did once spot that two consecutive issues of The Beano, for which I had checking responsibility, had the same issue number.