Tag: cycling

Adur Local Plan 2025 – your opportunity for early input

Adur District Council is looking for your input as it prepares to update the Adur Local Plan – an important document that is intended to guide and inform planning decisions across the district.

The process is at an early stage, looking for initial views, but looking at the ‘Key Issues’ Consultation Document, we’re already concerned about some aspects of the initial approach.

What are we concerned about?

a. The ‘Key Issues’ Consultation Document hints at an over-optimistic view of the current situation, saying “Adur has an increasing number of cycle routes and lanes.” In reality, there has been hardly any growth in provision of quality cycle infrastructure within the last decade. Trial schemes have been removed, ambitions have been curtailed and dangerous road layouts repainted. A privately constructed path has partly made good the previous loss of a route over the A27 near the airport, and some progress from West Sussex County Council is expected in Lancing in 2025, but Adur is lagging well behind many of the other areas within WSCC’s highways control.

b. The document says: “However, [designing developments to reduce car reliance] has limited effect on lifestyle choices and behaviours.”

We believe this statement is incorrect, and carries a defeatist view of the future. Evidence from other locations shows that when areas are well-designed, people are much more able to choose sustainable modes of transport like cycling and walking – and they do. The reason planning measures sometimes fail to boost transport choices is that building design is not co-ordinated with street design. There is no use building flats with optimistic cycle storage if the road used by residents is hostile and feels dangerous. We are currently witnessing this failure of co-ordination on the Western Harbour Arm and the A259.

So what are we asking for?

1.⁠ ⁠A more realistic view of the urgency and failure that we currently face. The people of Adur are demanding better transport choices, and they are not being delivered.

2.⁠ ⁠More effective collaboration and coordination between Adur District Council and West Sussex County Council, to ensure that aspirations around transport are actually given a chance to succeed, with streets that serve the aspirations of planning.

3.⁠ ⁠Greater presence for transport in the Adur Local Plan, with its own section (rather than transport being a factor mentioned only in the context of other issues).

The deadline for your input into this stage is on 5 January, so take a few minutes to browse the information and share your thoughts.

Small cycling improvements proposed for Middle Road, Shoreham

West Sussex County Council is proposing some changes that will make cycling safer for people – especially schoolchildren – travelling west along Middle Road in Shoreham. WSCC would like your feedback on this proposal (in addition to its larger proposal at the Upper Shoreham Road / Buckingham Road junction).

The plan is to modify two ‘chicane’ elements on Middle Road that currently squeeze bikes and motor vehicles through pinch points – by modifying the layout to enable westbound people on bikes to pass through safely, with a kind of ‘bypass’ layout.

This is a simple change that Shoreham-By-Cycle – alongside local councillors – has been requesting for many years. But we really don’t think this current plan goes far enough, for two reasons:

  • While improving westbound safety, this proposal does nothing to improve eastbound safety – particularly relevant for children heading to Shoreham Academy in the morning. We would like to see further low-cost modifications to ensure both directions are considered.
  • In a 2021 consultation, a host of other measures were offered for consideration, many of which received favourable responses from local residents. These were things like ‘raised table junctions’, widened pavements, continuous footways at side turnings, and the replacement of Middle Road’s notorious mini-roundabouts with T-junctions. Frustratingly, the mini-roundabouts were removed then exactly rebuilt in 2023’s drawn-out resurfacing project. What a missed opportunity for West Sussex County Council to have made improvements at the time.

We appreciate this is yet another consultation for the people of Adur. We know how frustrating it is to fill in constant surveys and questionnaires that rarely lead to any action, but the current process does rely on repeated consultation to preserve any hope of positive change.

So do take a look at the plans – as well as those for the other project being proposed at Upper Shoreham / Buckingham Road. Both projects share the same consultation.

Making walking (and cycling) safer and easier around The Triangle

Two improvement proposals are being planned in Shoreham, and West Sussex County Council is looking for your feedback.

First up is the busy, problematic junction between Upper Shoreham Road and Buckingham Road – sometimes known as The Triangle.

This is primarily a scheme to make walking easier and safer, particularly for schoolchildren. However, there are also some benefits for people driving and cycling.

The main points are:

  • a pedestrian crossing over Upper Shoreham Road
  • next to this, a crossing for people on bikes
  • a simplification of the road layout when turning from Buckingham Road into Upper Shoreham Road

We are supportive of this scheme. Though we are generally very cautious about any project that uses any level of shared-use space for foot and bike, we’ve discussed this with WSCC and we understand why, in this location, options are limited and this could be the best way to make this area safer in the short term.

While we support this new proposal, and look forward to the benefits it will bring, particularly to people on foot, it is very separate to the long-planned and already-consulted cycleways that Upper Shoreham Road needs to enable safe journeys by bike. We look forward to WSCC reviving this important – but very different– scheme when they are able to do so.

There is a secondary aspect to this current consultation, and that involves some minor cycling improvements to Middle Road, which we describe in another post.

Do complete the WSCC consultation, and play your part in improving the USR/Buckingham junction. We know the people of Adur have been asked to fill in so many consultations in recent years, and that it can be frustrating when we see more more consultation than we do action – but realistically, this is the way the system currently works, and it’s important for local residents to show their support for measures that make cycling (and in this case, walking and driving) easier and safer.