Plan Ducks Priority Issues
CHARMIAN KENNER
The ESCC Local Transport Plan contains a pretty comprehensive list of nice outcomes it would be hard to disagree with. But how is it going to be implemented? In particular, which interventions are going to be prioritised?
Hastings & St Leonards XR demonstrate last Saturday over Transport Plan
It includes a large number of road improvements and schemes – to the A27, to the A259 between Pevensey and the east of Rye (except in Hastings borough), to the A21 north of Hastings and to the A26 between Lewes and Newhaven. If these are done first, they will only prolong the reliance on cars and suppression of all other modes of transport. The targets of 18% reduced car trips and a large increase in Public Transport and Active Travel by 2050 leave the possibility of 25 years of making the composition of the atmosphere very much worse before getting round to making it better again. Ominously, the Plan has no interim target dates.
Implementation will depend on local Councils and ESCC working together effectively. Unfortunately this has not happened in Hastings. No progress at all has been made on the Hastings Walking & Cycling Strategy agreed in 2014. ESCC reallocated, to a road scheme, £3m of the £6m originally obtained for the network. Then in 2022 Hastings Borough Council (HBC) stopped the County from completing the much-delayed Alexandra Park Cycleway, a key section of the network, even though HBC had approved it in 2016. Now ESCC have cancelled all safe cycling route projects in Hastings with a loss of over £800,000 of Government funding. Most people of all ages will not take up or return to cycling without safe, mostly off-road, cycle routes. ESCC and HBC must work together to progress these vital routes in order to rebuild any credibility for their stated commitments to active travel and to tackling climate change.
The most positive outcome would be for East Sussex to find itself in a few years time with a clean, healthy environment and mobility for all – for young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural and everyone in between – with pleasant streets and thriving local shops. In that nice future, there would have to be comfortable and efficient, frequent and fast buses, given as much bus-only route miles as road space allows; joined-up cycle networks safe enough for a lone ten-year old to ride; wide uncluttered pavements and pedestrian priority crossings for journeys on foot; and a joined up motorised vehicle network which allows access everywhere but which no longer allows the vehicles to marginalise, dominate, dirty and endanger all other road uses.
But that will mean taking some road-space from cars, vans and lorries, because there is nowhere else to put the other modes of transport if you don’t. The time to start doing this is now.
Charmian Kenner is a member of Hastings Sustainable Transport Forum. See www.transitiontownhastings.org.uk/category/minutes for the Forum’s full consultation response.
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The most positive outcome would be for East Sussex to find itself in a few years time with a clean, healthy environment and mobility for all – for young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural and everyone in between – with pleasant streets and thriving local shops.
There’s plenty of ground-up desire for this so where’s the top-down drive to get it done?