BRIGHTON and Hove City Council should think long and hard before committing the ratepayers to more expense.

The city has never been a natural area to encourage cycling. Two major bugbears work against the cyclist: wind and hills.

Brighton has both in abundance, which makes cycling tiring and unpleasant.

Narrow, poorly surfaced roads and chaotic traffic conditions in the city centre don’t inspire people to want to cycle into town.

Two major systems are a complete farce. The Dyke Road Avenue cycle lane is unusable due to parked cars. And parked vehicles cause visibility problems in The Drive and Grand Avenue cycle lanes.

In both cases cyclists are invisible to traffic turning into houses and onto business premises.

They need to be seen by other road users to be safe.

Cycle lanes are only satisfactory and safe if they exist in addition to the road surface and not just a marked-off section of the original road.

The city is not a good cycling area and no amount of money will improve it.

I fear that few holiday makers will have the necessary information to register for the use of Boris Bikes while staying in Brighton. These bikes can only be used if you pre-register your name, address and bank details for obvious security reasons.

If the city wants to help cyclists, then money spent on improving roads and filling in holes around the gutters would benefit all road users. Some of the city’s roads are in a dreadful state – especially around Queen’s Road below the station.

Brighton is not very good for cyclists, so perhaps we should stop wasting money on fixing the impossible.

Hugh P N Robinson, Merlin Close, Hove