A row over a cycle lane in Bolton has spilled into the local press, angry residents insistent that a new cycle lane is the cause of rat-running motorists using their street as a cut through and making the route “like a motorway”.

Residents of Lord Street in Farnworth, near Bolton, took to the local newspaper The Bolton News with complaints and claims about speeding drivers putting nursery children in danger and causing damage to parked cars in collisions. 

The subject of the ire, however, was not the conduct of road users but a new cycle lane on the main road through the town, Market Street, which was installed as part of a £5m project to boost active travel in the area and was accompanied by new pedestrian crossings.

However, residents of Lord Street claim the cycling infrastructure has made congestion worse and means their road has “become a rat run”.

“You’ll see car after car after car after car,” one local complained to the local paper. “There’ll be seven or eight cars all speeding down because they’re trying to bypass Market Street. If a bus stops there, it will block the road completely, and then they’ll all start cutting through here. And they’re speeding – nobody is going at a respectful speed.

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“If we – as people who live here – are trying to park, you’ll have one behind you and one behind you and they will not give you space to park. It’s always been a lovely, quiet street, but it’s become a main road since they’ve started all of these – these supposed improvements or whatever. Who owns a bike? Nobody has seen anybody use it at all.”

Another resident, Philip Tonge, told the local press rat-running drivers were causing damage to people’s cars, clipping wing mirrors and hitting parked vehicles.

“With schools and nurseries being so near, it’s really dangerous for the kids,” he said. “I can see they’re trying to encourage a different way of travelling – but to me it just makes the whole road layout more confusing.

“You’re suddenly mixing pedestrians and cyclists with cars at those junctions where it’s unclear who’s going to have right of way. The other side of it to me is – because you’ve now separated the bikes from the road, it’s harder to spot them. You look in your mirror when you turn left off the road and you can’t see them.”

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Other residents told the paper “everyone’s going to hit each other” and “nobody in Farnworth cycles”. 

Sharon Hall added: “We’re worried about the constant amount of traffic and the kids coming out of school – there’s three schools here. In the morning and at team time it’s like a motorway – three cars here have been hit. It’s just dangerous, there’s going to be an accident.

“I don’t know why they’ve done it – you don’t really see anyone on bikes around here, it’s not like a city centre. They’re trying to treat it like that, and as a knock-on effect, the traffic’s cutting through everywhere. This one’s being treated like a main road.”

The local press also heard from a former councillor who said she had opposed the plans when they were approved by Bolton Council. Melanie Livesey also claimed “people can’t get off their drives” and “we’ve got disabled people who can’t get out of their houses”.

A current councillor suggested the congestion and rat-running “problem has been going on for years” but did believe “the Streets for All programme in Farnworth has made it worse with traffic coming off the main road”.

The noise over cycling projects in Farnworth has been long-running. Last April, locals blamed a new cycle lane for “horrendous” congestion and people driving on the wrong side of the road.