For several months every year, hundreds of coaches use the western end of Marine Parade alongside the Sea Life Centre to drop off and pick up passengers, parking on double yellow lines, and even in the middle of the A259, for extended periods.
This causes enormous tailbacks on the coast road (mostly single-lane in this location), and unacceptable noise and air pollution, since the drivers leave their engines running, often for over an hour at a time, with the din of the vehicles' air conditioning units adding to the racket. Imagine this with one coach; now multiply that by 10-12 coaches, for hours on end, every day during the summer and autumn.
The passengers, usually teenagers, disembark into the middle of the road, and both sides of the street are clogged up with hordes of tourists on the pavements, requiring local pedestrians to step onto the A259 to get past them.
This contributes enormously to the already highly polluted city - deemed the 5th most polluted place in the country a few years ago - and there is well-established scientific evidence linking even short-term air pollution, let alone long-term, to cardiovascular diseases, including stroke. In fact, someone who lives opposite what has now turned into a coach park suffered a stroke in 2021, having spent years lobbying against this illegal parking, to no avail. Brighton & Hove Council simply ignores the problem.
This has become much worse since the Council closed Madeira Drive (where nobody lives) to most traffic during the pandemic in 2020. Despite numerous complaints about this arrangement, assorted council departments have spent the past few years fobbing people off with a variety of feeble excuses, and usually direct the complainant to the emergency one-off illegal parking number, even though they have been advised numerous times as to the regular hours of the pick-ups, which are the same hours every day.
This is ruining lives. Apart from the potentially serious risk to residents' health, many of us work from home, and the serial ignoring of our complaints about noise intrusion and the detriment to air quality has added to the stress.
We were told the new configuration of traffic with the removal of the Aquarium roundabout would mitigate the problem, but this has - again - been delayed.
The Council is supposed to act in the interests of its constituents, but years of being gaslit - when we're paying some of the most expensive rates of Council Tax in the country - are enough.
If you could sign this petition, it would be much appreciated.
