£220 ‘banana’ riser stem sells out (all three of them); Sustrans-funded cycle lane wrongly criticised for wasting taxpayer money; “This is not anti-cycling”: 1000 residents oppose London cycle lane proposal + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
Rapha founder Simon Mottram becomes lead investor in independent British brand Quirk Cycles
Who says we can’t seamlessly segue from silly to serious…
> Rapha founder Simon Mottram becomes lead investor in independent British bike brand Quirk Cycles
"This is not anti-cycling": 1000 residents oppose London cycle lane proposal
Westminster City Council’s meetings became distinctly more lively last week as debate ensued over the fate of proposed cycle lanes intended to link together Marylebone and Kilburn away from busy main roads.
The Standard reported that the proposed lane, skirting Lord’s cricket ground, was opposed by more than 1000 people who signed the petition organised by the Hamilton Terrace Residents Association. Reasons given for opposing the proposal was the loss of 130 parking spaces, the council using outdated traffic data and two of the three proposal suggestions putting “cyclists safety at risk”.
However, the only proposal of the three which would significantly reduce the number of parking spaces would create a bi-directional segregated cycle lane down the middle of Hamilton Terrace, with an estimated cost of £500,000. That proposal would be most effective at slowing vehicles but has also, as you might expect, received the most pushback from local residents. The other two proposals concern ‘advisory cycle lanes’ one either side of the road, one immediately next to the pavement.
The other would position the lanes to the right of existing parking spaces, but given cars would be likely to cut across the lane, and the proposals are being suggested to reduce road danger, this would be a rather bold choice to say the least.
The petitioner presenting the anti-cycle lane petition said the proposals would “endanger residents due to unintuitive and dangerous kerb-side cycle lanes” and added that they feared cyclists would be ‘doored’ by drivers getting out of cars.
“What about the need for additional lighting, with speeding e-bikes and scooters coming down [the road]?” Stephen Margolis said.
“What about cars coming out of drives, and people having to cross the cycle lane to get to their car, and the opening of car doors, or using the charging points in the lampposts.”
Westminster Council say that no proposal has been chosen yet and that the reforms are needed to address road safety in the area. Councillor Max Sullivan said
“The proposal… that has a cycle lane in the middle of the road does have some serious drawbacks and would be a bit of an outlier if we went for it. We do have a clear need to address the high number of pedestrian and cyclist casualties that we have in Westminster.
“Westminster has the unhappy position of being at the top of the league table when it comes to people killed or seriously injured on our roads,” he added. House of Commons data shows there were more than 1100 casualties in the City of London and Westminster constituency last year.
With Conservatives in London also battling to oppose plans to partly close Oxford Street to vehicles, this is the latest part in an ongoing story of local active travel infrastructure that just won’t go away.
Road Safety Week = Well-intentioned Facebook posts attracting the internet's wrath
Maybe for the sake of your blood-pressure avoid the comments on this one…
Talk about a segregated cycle lane...
Thanks to the Urban Cycling Institute (our favourite UCI, frankly) for bringing this to our attention once again…
‘Alexa, can you find a video that perfectly illustrates the status of cycling policy making around the world?’
?: ‘???? | ???? | ?♂️??’
(?️ by @ABC7Chicago) pic.twitter.com/arjxzHdklD
— Urban Cycling Institute ? (@fietsprofessor) November 16, 2025
"A step backwards": British bike brand Quella criticise proposed Cycle to Work cuts
We reported last week on the political fallout of the suggestion the government may introduce a spending cap on the Cycle to Work scheme in the upcoming budget.
Now UK-brand Quella have added their voice to the issue. General Manager Josh Hale has put out a statement warning that the move would “risk undoing years of progress in active travel”.
“There’s a misconception that Cycle to Work is used primarily by high-earners buying luxury bikes. That simply isn’t reflected in our customer base. Our bestselling commuter model starts at £399 for a simple, robust single-speed that suits short to medium city commutes.
“If the budget changes reduce access or increase costs for employees, we risk undoing years of progress in active travel. Many riders depend on affordable geared bikes which [are] built specifically for commuting and requires very little maintenance.
“Making these options harder to reach will only push people back towards car or public-transport dependency at a time when encouraging greener, healthier travel should be a priority.
“We hope that, as details become clearer, the Government recognises the scheme’s real-world value: it helps ordinary commuters choose a cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable way to get to work. Diluting that would be a step backwards.”
The scheme was first introduced under Tony Blair in 1999. The previous £1000 cap was lifted by the Conservatives in 2019, but it’s thought that that decision is what is likely to be reversed, at least in part. The move would most significantly impact the e-bike market. You can read more about the original speculation below:
2026 British Cycling National Series calendar unveiled
British Cycling this morning announced the dates of their 2026 National Road and Circuit series calendar, and next year’s calendar will see eight women’s events and seven men’s. The women’s series will kick off with the Women’s CiCLE Classic in Rutland on Sunday 22nd March before all following events (men and women) take place on the same day. The full calendar is as follows:
The East Cleveland Classic, Saltburn – Sunday 12 April 2026
Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix, Lincoln – Sunday 10 May 2026
Tour of the Reservoir, Consett – Sunday 7 June 2026
TBA – Sunday 12 July 2026
South Molton GP, South Molton – Sunday 19 July 2026
Beaumont Trophy, Stamfordham – Sunday 9 August 2026
North Yorkshire Grand Prix, Ampleforth – Sunday 16 August 2026
Meanwhile the National Circuit Open and Women’s series will take place on the following dates next summer:
Fort Vale Colne Grand Prix 2026, Colne – Tuesday 16 June 2026
2026 LOGCO Otley Cycle Races, Otley – Wednesday 1 July 2026
2026 Ilkley Cycle Races, Ilkley – Friday 3 July 2026
CANYON Guildford Town Centre Races, Guildford – Wednesday 8 July 2026
Dawlish Grand Prix, Dawlish – Friday 17 July 2026
Sheffield Grand Prix, Sheffield – Wednesday 22 July 2026
There was no news however regarding the national championships, which this year took place in Aberystwyth the week before the Tour de France. Fingers crossed we’ll have news on that front soon enough. And any excuse to attach a photo of a pro cyclist eating ice cream, they’re just like us…
Why have deaths and serious injuries in collisions involving HGVs being driven in London halved since 2019?
A big question, and a rather serious, important answer…
Sustrans-funded cycle lane blasted...for wasting taxpayer money?
Today’s dose of Facebook brain comes from Greenock, Scotland where Inverclyde Now reported earlier today that Inverclyde Council have contracted out repair works and upgrades to National Cycle Route 75, replacing temporary infrastructure with a new segregated cycle lane. The contract is to the value of £190,000.
Cue the usual comments. “Think Inverclyde council should get a grip I’m sure there is a lot more projects they could put this money into ? ? ?” wrote one.
“What a fantastic idea, must be awesome to waste £190k” said another, alongside the usual smorgasbord of derision at never having seen anyone cycling in the lane.
The rub of all this though, is that this isn’t taxpayer money but a grant received from the WalkWheelCycling Trust (the Sustainable Transport charity formerly known as SusTrans). It’s part of a wider funding allocation of £550,000 designed to support various active travel projects in the district.
A calm island in the comments section storm, David Whitelaw was there to attempt to soothe his fellow social media users. “Maybe folks should try reading the full story in Inverclyde Now. The money is coming from Sustrans and is to improve an existing temporary cycle route and make it safer for cyclists, pedestrians and motorists. Not a great fan of our Labour run council but in this instance they aren’t spending any of our council tax.”
In slight defence of the hotheads, Inverclyde Now didn’t link to their own article in the Facebook post and left out details of where the money was coming from in their original Facebook post, making it too easy for some people to rush to conclusions. Still, our thanks to you, David, for your public information service.
"Why's he on a yellow bike": Internet befuddled by Van der Poel
Occasionally a social media post breaks out beyond the world of cycling. This is good, we want to share our appreciation and wonder for our weird little niche. But that invariably means dealing with slightly irritating comments.
Canyon posted a video of their star athletes Jasper Philipsen and Mathieu van der Poel competing in a track stand-off in front of a small crowd of smiling, adoring fans. The result, unsurprisingly, went in favour of the seven-time World Cyclocross champion, though his cheeky foot on the wheel has not gone unnoticed in road.cc HQ. But that’s all alien to some.
“Why’s he on an all yellow bike?” “Dude in the yellow bike has good skills ?” “Yellow Bike guy still standing there” “Why did the yellow bike dude start early?” Those are our favourites, seems like Van der Poel might have a new nickname now.
Perhaps our favourite comment came from someone in the know though: “yeah fair a 7 time cyclocross world champion vs a sprinter who can’t keep a line ??”
18-year-old junior suspended after testing positive for methamphetamine
We don’t normally bring you news of every positive doping test but this one slightly blew our minds.
18-year old Artyom Proskuryakov has been suspended by the UCI after testing positive for methamphetamines at the World Championships in Rwanda.
The positive test occured following the junior road race on the 23rd September, a race which the Azerbaijani rider did not finish.
Proskuryakov has the right to request the testing of his B-sample and in the meantime there’s not a lot more to say. But for an 18-year-old junior to test positive for a substance like this raises a lot of serious questions for the wellbeing and protection of bodily autonomy of young riders, and for the national cycling federation of Azerbaijan.
Premier Tech to sponsor St Michel - Auber 93
Premier Tech’s withdrawal from the Israel cycling project left the strangest of things, a company openly willing to fund a cycling team without requiring the begging and arm-wrangling of a general manager. Speculation had grown over where exactly the Candian agri-tech business were going to place the money and now we have an answer…
The move puts Premier Tech in partnership with Alison Jackson, a former Paris-Roubaix winner and one of the most marketable athletes in the sport. Oh, and she’s Canadian.
> “It has become untenable for us to continue”: Israel-Premier Tech’s title sponsor steps down
Notably, this partnership doesn’t prevent Premier Tech from becoming a title sponsor of another team, and italian oracle Ciro Scognamiglio recently tweeted that Alpecin were the favourites to attract title sponsorship to replace Deceuninck as a title sponsor.
"It's like a motorway": Furious residents blame bike lane for speeding drivers using their road as cut-through, as former councillor claims "people can't get off their drives"
A Bolton bike lane? A residential “rat run”? Really wish I could think of a third bit of alliteration for this story but that’s what a comments section is for…
£220 'banana' riser stem sells out (all three of them)
For years, consumers and industry insiders have yearned for fruit-themed adaptations to their bicycles. Well, we needn’t wallow any longer…
East London frame builders Stayer have released their Banana Banana riser stem for the price of £220 and it’s described as being “ideal for cargo bikes, retro MTBs, commuters and tall riders”.
We’ll have to take their word for it though as only three have been produced and they’ve already sold out their extremely limited run. Stayer say they plan on making more, available with both a 60mm and 100mm reach.
And, price point aside, there does appear to be some utility to the funky stem, with the stem design first built in 2021 so that a bike could run drop bars and a front basket. Here’s a prototype from a couple of years ago, efficiency in every sense of the word..
And if that’s not enough, because no one wants a perfectly yellow banana, for an additional £20 you can customise it to be any colour you want, though Stayer recommend “an unripe green, an over-ripe brown, or another never-before-heard-of banana-phase-of-life entirely.” As a fan of both the tropical fruit and the Velvet Underground though, it’ll be trusty yellow for me…
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@chrisonabike True, things went back to normal once the pandemic was over. In this case, however the problems are still ongoing, and aren't likely to be resolved in the near future. If anything, they're going to get worse. Food shortages are predicted because of the effect that the heatwave has had on crops. This is bound to push prices up. The Straits of Hormuz aren't likely to reopen anytime soon and the strategic oil reserves are running low. Russia is having to import petrol because its own refineries have been badly hit, so that's even more competition for an even more scarce resource. I think that more and more people are going to see cycling as a way of cutting household bills.
I think if "grown up" cyclists * are quibbling about ASLs we've very much missed the road safety point anyway. (Not to mention the wider "better transport choices" picture). ASLs are poor-to-useless "cycling infra", even for their design intent. If the idea is "for less confident cyclists" then a design that requires that you re-position in front of the motor traffic - waiting to accelerate - seems unhelpful. Of course they're only designed to help when traffic is stopped, and you can reach the front in time and if vehicles aren't already occupying them. As we're noting here drivers frequently ignore them - whether that be deliberate, a lack of road craft, because they were concentrating on following the vehicle in front, or because the paint has rubbed off. * Aside: shouldn't cycling also be safe and accessible for kids? Or should they only be allowed to do this when accompanied by sufficient qualified adults? Or be limited to parks and otherwise being driven around by their carers? Perhaps there is another way...?
Hi Bungle, I saw you follow-up comment. I can't imaging there's a tolerance of 4 seconds on camera enforced lights, seems an odd decision - an offence is committed if a vehicle starts crossing on a red, any tolerance is discretionary. There does seem to be some odd thinking about 'advanced stop lines' where the rules relating to them are identical to a regular stop line, as explained correctly elsewhere in the Highway Code. It does seem a regular offence. Where I live it doesn't help that some of them are very faint and disappear in rain.
@ktache Not sure he's totally ruled out of the worlds yet (though I think it would be best if he doesn't), normal recovery time is about eight weeks but surgery can halve that...depending on the nature of the break he could be just about fit to ride by the time of the elite men's race, but he'll have missed a lot of training. Hopefully his managers and team will persuade him to wait until Lombardia, if not just to knock it off for the rest of the year.
@Bungle_52 The Met told me a couple of years ago when rejecting a submission that they needed a clear three seconds of red visible before they would consider it for an RLJ prosecution. I pointed out to them that this meant that at 30 mph a driver could see a light change to red from 40 metres away and still get through without sanction, or 55 m if they accelerated to 40 as most do. They just replied "them's our rules..."
@Ben Graham I have just checked the footage from my report. The driver crosses the 1st stop line 4 seconds after the light turns red. All on camera from behind the vehicle. No further action. So I assume the margin is at least 4 seconds.
Oh, and active travel funding per head (in England at least) is laughable compared to other places. Plus it is delivered intermittently. It's more like a Blue Peter contest...
Yup, I see those opportunities being missed all the time in Edinburgh. When it gets really bad, dig it all up and put it back down again how it was. Contrast with what seems to happen in NL - when things are dug up the whole thing seems to get a "let's redo this according to the current standards" treatment. They even coordinate with the utilities, so that after a refurb the street isn't immediately dug up again because of leaking pipes / we suddenly realised the new estate being planned for round the corner will want broadband etc. Pros and cons of course - you may wait longer there for changes as smaller changes may be deferred until a major redo is due. (Though in the UK case you likely wouldn't get them at all...) It seems we "can't have nice things" in the UK in part because a) we have greater motor traffic speeds/volumes spead across "streets" / within urban areas b) the funding and organisational responsibility differs. Are we in the "Sam Vimes boots" territory (being too poor to afford better products which not only save money over time but actually work)? There is long term money pressure on LAs and it seems that due to poor construction and maintenance we have to regularly pour money into (pot-)holes in the road. And it seems there's no budget to check up on or enforce adequate standards from utilities work or even private building.
Shame about the world champs defence. Speedy recovery. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/aug/30/tadej-pogacar-vuelta-a-espana-cycling-crash-hospital-stage-nine
I believe the accepted form for this kind of argument is "I know you are, you said you were, but what am I?".
21 thoughts on “£220 ‘banana’ riser stem sells out (all three of them); Sustrans-funded cycle lane wrongly criticised for wasting taxpayer money; “This is not anti-cycling”: 1000 residents oppose London cycle lane proposal + more on the live blog”
Is this a Brexit bonus?
Is this a Brexit bonus? Presumably we wouldn’t have been allowed those stems under EU regulations?
According to the regulations
According to the regulations bananas must not have “abnormal curvature” without giving any clue as to what that actually means, so pretty much anything goes anyway.
Perhaps they’re against
Perhaps they’re against hyperbolic geometries?
I think that would be an
I think that would be an exaggeration.
I’m surprised they don’t come
I’m surprised they don’t come from Ireland like most bananas over here…
Today’s Guardian has a “best
Today’s Guardian has a “best Christmas gifts for cyclists” listicle which might be of interest: https://www.theguardian.com/thefilter/2024/nov/19/best-cycling-gifts-ideas-presents-gloves-socks
Mostly it’s a fairly sensible selection of products, a few clangers aside, but I would prefer more nuance and discussion than just “this is the one to get”.
It does features the daysaver
It does features the daysaver and I reckon anyone getting one of those is going to be well pleased. And it would seem that bikeInn are shipping easily to the UK, they didn’t for a while. No JIS upgrade bit there mind, so I’m still regretting not going for the p&p free from the US, as the tariffs originally hit.
I wonder how much it cost to
I wonder how much it cost to get on that list
I’m not sure I see the a-peel
I’m not sure I see the a-peel of a banana stem. Is it aerodynamic for riding in a bunch?
Yeah – I can’t see it sup
Yeah – I can’t see it sup-plantain more classic designs any time soon. I certainly wouldn’t fritter my money away on them.
mdavidford wrote:
Well, upgrading bike parts is a slippery slope
hawkinspeter wrote:
No but it’s very handy when there are splits.
The most common banana type
The most common banana type is apparently Cavendish. Stands to reason.
“…a race which the
“…a race which the Azerbaijani rider did not finish.” Adding insult to injury, he tested positive to a UCI-banned substance after DNF. That was a very bad day at the office, wasn’t it? Only 18 y.o. and his future could already be behind him.
Re: potentially capping the
Re: potentially capping the cycle to work scheme…
I think the bike industry needs to make it’s mind up
In January 2024: “Cycle to work schemes are sucking the lifeblood out of cycle shops”: Bike shops tell Parliamentary Committee of “need for urgent systemic change” to Cycle to Work scheme.
https://road.cc/content/news/bike-shops-want-systemic-change-cycle-work-306399
Two entirely separate issues:
Two entirely separate issues: retailers were saying that it was too burdensome for them to bear the cost of the scheme alone and that various other parts of it needed to be tweaked; now they are also saying that capping it will add to the lack of profitability it offers them. There’s no inconsistency there. Your comment is like saying to someone who complains about the NHS being inefficient well now we’re abolishing the NHS and you don’t like that either, you need to make your mind up. Advocating for change is not the same as campaigning for abolition.
Who’s campaigning for the
Who’s campaigning for the abolotion of the cycle to work scheme? Not sure why you chose to make that up.
Rendel didn’t make it up –
Rendel didn’t make it up – Quella did. They’re the ones who brought up “If the budget changes reduce access”, when all that seems to have been mentioned elsewhere is capping how much you can spend through it.
On the face of it, their argument does seem a little confused: “Most people are only spending £400, and if you cap it at £1000 it will put them off.”
There’s a big difference
There’s a big difference between “urgent systemic change” and simply putting a limit on the scheme. Indeed, it’s possible the “limit” won’t be a hard limit on the amount you can use the scheme for, but a limit on the tax/national insurance savings you can make, cf. the rumoured salary sacrifice cap on pension contributions.
If you read through the concerns in the article you have listed, basically none of them would be fixed by a limit. The only way bike shops might benefit is if people buy the same bike directly rather than via a cycle to work scheme. If people buy cheaper bikes, or simply don’t buy bikes at all if it is less affordable, then that will harm shops.
Quote:
No problem with the scheme but the WWCT receives 89% of its funding (£132M of £146M total) via government grant so it is taxpayers’ money, albeit not from council tax as some believe.
Oh! South Molton, well I
Oh! South Molton, well I never. My sister lives in N Molton. There used to be a ride called the Exmoor Beast round there, don’t think it’s alive any more
. Might go down for that one. Except…it’s my kids’ birthday…