JUST when most people in Brighton had forgotten it, back comes the Valley Gardens road scheme to gladden the hearts of cyclists everywhere and bring groans from car and bus drivers.

Always controversial, the scheme to restrict traffic to one lane each way while creating new routes for buses and taxis was a final bequest from the Greens before they lost city council power last year.

Remarkably it succeeded in uniting the bus and taxi drivers in opposition. They saw what car drivers did. Namely that this would likely lead to even longer jams than we experience in our gummed-up city at present.

But money had already been committed and the new Labour administration was stuck with it. At first the party seriously thought about scrapping the whole scheme but contracts had been signed.

There was no going back beyond a few tweaks.

Now the council is discussing those tweaks with various groups. Initial soundings are not favourable among many.

Months and months of roadworks are ahead of us for what on the face of it appears to be very little benefit.

We remain concerned that the city council seems to be conducting these consultations in secret. Everyone should be told what is proposed at the same time. We don’t want a rerun of the King Alfred consultation process again.

But for now, of greater concern is the impact this scheme will have on the city itself. We have already heard how one million day trippers were lost in a year.

We can ill afford more disruption that promotes a reputation that coming here is more trouble than its worth.