Brighton & Hove City Council has won a place on the shortlist of two national transport awards for its JourneyOn travel planning website and the Lewes Road scheme.
There were 87 entries for the Smarter Travel Awards and Brighton & Hove was selected in the ‘best smarter travel app’ and ‘most improved journey to work’ categories.
Designed with the help of residents, the new JourneyOn website (www.journeyon.co.uk), re- launched last September, automatically adapts to mobile devices which means travel advice on tap the moment you step out the door.
Users can compare information to work out the quickest or cheapest travel option, find out about calories burnt, the amount of CO2 produced by choice of journey and inclines for cycling trips – particularly useful in a hilly seaside city.
You can follow ‘digital walks’ around the city, including one that takes in famous film locations. See live train times, plan journeys in Brighton & Hove or across Sussex, with journey alerts and departure information, as well as ‘My location’ for quick trip planning on GPS enabled devices. Get live bus times by telling JourneyOn where you are or the number of the bus you want and it’ll work out the rest. The council has added maps showing car parking, cycle parking, taxi ranks and roadwork locations and linked the site to its traffic live twitter feed relaying traffic incidents and possible hold ups.
Since the relaunch there were 21% more users in just two months and the site is the most often visited council travel and transport webpage next to the parking pages. There have been 7% more visits from mobile phones which shows that the site is becoming more popular with users “on-the-go”. The impact of JourneyOn is wide-reaching; 28% of site visits are made from London.
The Lewes Road improvement scheme involved converting the existing 4.5km long dual carriageway between the Vogue Gyratory and Falmer into a single carriageway for general traffic alongside a dedicated bus lane with a widened cycle lane. The council added pedestrian and cycle crossing facilities at various locations along the route.
Initial findings from the monitoring of the scheme showed a 7% increase in the number of bus passengers; daily cyclist numbers on Lewes Road rose from 2,085 to 2,383 following implementation of the scheme – an increase of 14% and general traffic on Lewes Road reduced by 13%.
Proposals were subject to wide scale public consultation with 63% of respondents supporting the Lewes Road scheme plans.
Councillor Ian Davey, lead member for transport at Brighton & Hove City Council, said: “We’re really pleased to be nominated yet again for national awards that are recognising our transport achievements.
“One of the main aims of the Lewes Road improvement scheme is to make sustainable forms of transport more attractive where it is a practical option for those concerned. Although the scheme has only been in place for a short period, the initial monitoring is very positive. The Journey On website has been developed with users in mind and to fit with whatever digital device they use and that too is proving popular.”
In September last year Brighton & Hove was named European ‘City of the Year’ by Civitas for policies to promote clean transport and shortlisted for the National Transport Awards ‘Transport Authority of the Year.’ In October it was highly commended for the Lewes Road and the Seven Dials improvement schemes.
The Smarter Travel Awards will be announced on 5 February 2015.
See the full shortlist on the Smarter Travel Awards website
Plan your journey at www.journeyon.co.uk
In a story published by the BBC today, Prof John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, says: “We need substantial investment in cycling infrastructure to make our streets safer.
"If more people cycled or walked to work or school, it would make a big difference in raising levels of physical activity."
Find out more about cycling in the city