City council highly commended in transport awards
Brighton & Hove City Council has been highly commended for two of its major transport schemes in this year’s National Transport Awards.
The commendations were made last night (2 October) in the ‘Improvements to Bus Services’ category for the Lewes Road Sustainable Transport Corridor and the ‘Road Safety, Traffic Management & Enforcement’ category for the Seven Dials road safety scheme.
Just last week the council won the top European award for clean transport, named City of the Year by Civitas.
In its latest awards submission, the council detailed how the city’s sustainable travel projects have helped the city to be recognised nationally as the UK’s least car dependent city outside London by the Campaign for Better Transport. Almost 40 per cent of residents do not own a car.
The Seven Dials scheme made the chaotic junction safer and easier to navigate for all road users and upgraded the pedestrian environment.
As well as the Lewes Road scheme, improvements to bus services such as smartcard ticketing and a growing network of bus lanes helped earn the council a place in the bus category. Bus journeys in the city have doubled in the last 20 years to 46 million annually. Around 92 per cent of passengers say they are either very or fairly satisfied with the service.
Lead councillor for transport Ian Davey said: “It’s great to have this recognition nationally that we are delivering projects which transport experts far and wide believe are common sense. Our aim is to get the city moving by offering a broad choice of transport modes - and get them all working as effectively as possible.”
Martin Harris, Managing Director, Brighton & Hove Bus and Coach Company added: "Brighton & Hove Buses are delighted to have been involved with this work which is so important to the economic and social life of the city. It continues our proud history of partnership which has seen the city rise to become the top city for bus use in the UK outside of the capital. More bus trips are made per head of population than anywhere else in the country.”