Catch a guided bus with homes plan

Developers Mayfield Market Towns told an audience at a meeting that a guided bus could be run to near Burgess Hill station and also call at Wivelsfield, about a mile away.

Lee Newlyn told the audience: “We have been talking to the Highways Agency about the possibility of taking a guided bus through there.

“There is a route that can be taken, we have a route that’s been designed to take them through around the back of the factories via landscaped strips and back into the centre.

“It is possible and feasible and, you know, not overly costly, to look at something like a guided bus, which would if it worked well, I mean at the moment you sit on the A2300 at Hickstead junction, or even half way up the A23, trying to get off into Burgess Hill, if it works people can come in on a park and ride and go in on a guided bus and then come out again and get the car...”

After briefly discussing improvements to Burgess Hill station Mr Newlyn added: “Burgess Hill are very ambitious about their growth and we feel we can benefit them providing a guided bus into Burgess Hill and off to Wivelsfield Station.

During his talk Mr Newlyn also told the audience: “We did at one stage look at an American model where they actually have golf carts, effectively buggies that run electronically can shift over fair distances at 35 miles an hour, literally run on seperate tracks up to the station. But, again, is is English? I’m not sure. Does it work in a hot climate? Probably better. So we have not gone along that route at the present time.”

London Mayor Boris Johnson is well known for his cycling and Mr Newlyn told the audience at the Women in Property meeting in Brighton: “We have sort of ‘maxed’ as much as we can on named sustainable ways of dealing with it, city car clubs even introducing a Boris-style bike centred around the area so that people can cycle round. All of those aspects of it are built into the model at the present time.”

Boris Johnson instigated the Barclays sponsored Boris bikes scheme, where cyclists hire bikes.

Centred in London it involves docking stations will cover about 100 square kilometres

after a major extension south of the Thames.