PARENTS of schoolchildren and environmental activists held a ‘funeral’ for the Old Shoreham Road cycle lane.

The group held the protest against the removal of the cycle lanes following a decision by the council last month.

Brennan Holt, a Hove resident whose children used the cycle lane to go to school, said: “This cycle lane provides the best connection route for more than 6,000 pupils from eight different schools who could travel more safely to and from school via this cycle route.

“Other alternative routes such as Portland Road and New Church Road, do not provide a direct access alternative to this route.”

Labour and Conservative councillors voted to axe the controversial cycle lane, with Green councillor Amy Heley describing the request to remove the lane as shameful and a disgrace in a council meeting in August.

Some protesters donned funeral attire and left "tributes" to the cycle lane. One read: "We all deserve safe streets - keep OSR (Old Shoreham Road) cycle lane."

Melissa Shinn, a spokeswoman for Extinction Rebellion Brighton, said: “Various forms of motorised transport are responsible for 33 per cent of Brighton and Hove council’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“It is totally incomprehensible, in the week before Car-Free Mobility Week, that the council - due to Labour and Conservative councillors’ insistence - are tearing out one of the long planned strategic zero emission travel backbones that are vital to achieve the council’s objective of carbon neutrality by 2030.

“The council has invested almost £250,000 of central government taxpayers’ money in this cycle lane so far, and it will cost more than £50,000 of local council funds to remove it.”

​Melissa also claimed that the removal of the cycle lane will jeapordise a future application for roughly £3 million of funding from the government for “active travel” infrastructure investments in the city.

Work to remove the Old Shoreham Road cycle lane will begin tomorrow (September 13), and is expected to end in the early hours of September 19.

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