A temporary barrier installed on one of Belfast’s busiest streets is to be removed after two years.
The orange, plastic boards were first put in place after an elderly woman tripped and fell on the kerb in January 2023 after a £52,000 street renovation installed a cycle lane. Transport officials subsequently said that an “optical illusion appeared to have been created when the footway [pavement] was extended next to the cycle lane”.
However, the imposition of the barriers has been unpopular with local residents and businesses who previously described the barriers as an “eyesore” that “looks like a building site”. It was also reported that £11,000 in consultancy fees had been spent on trying to find a solution to the raised kerb, a solution that has still not been implemented.
Northern Ireland’s Department for Infrastructure (DfI) say the removal of the barriers would be carried out “in the coming weeks” in order to ensure they are removed in time for Christmas. “A removed strip of footway should provide a clearer demarcation between the road and the cycle lane,” adding that they were “continuing to work towards a more permanent solution”.
As active travel infrastructure has been overhauled and upgraded since the coronavirus pandemic, concerns have been raised over the quality of investments made into improving cycle lanes and pedestrian safety.
Most notoriously, around 40 people sought compensation from the council after tripping and injuring themselves on a raised kerb on Keynsham high street in Somerset, built to accommodate a new cycle lane. The council’s infrastructure plans were also criticised by the town’s then MP Jacob Rees-Mogg who labelled the bike lanes “a failed experiment”.
However, those compensation claims were dismissed by Bath & North East Somerset council which repainted the bike lanes red whilst retaining the same infrastructure layout.
The barrier removal in Belfast has been warmly received by local councillors and businesses. Martina Connolly, Chief Executive of the Belfast One Business Improvement District, welcomed the DfI’s action, telling the BBC it was “encouraging that the voices of the business community are now being heard” whilst Belfast city councillor and former Lord Mayor Michael Long tweeted that “it is hard to believe that this has taken so long to fix”.
Having 1st reported the problem back in December 2022, it is hard to believe that this has taken so long to fix, esp when the resolution does not seem very complicated.
BBC News https://t.co/uPBqzAFQ9K— Michael Long (@CllrMichaelLong) October 13, 2025
-1024x680.jpg "“Clear anti-cyclist bias”: Lawsuit filed against Toronto police after cop doored cyclist… before ticketing rider over incident")
6 thoughts on ““Eyesore” Belfast bike lane barriers installed to prevent ‘optical illusion’ to be removed after more than two years”
Is it too obvious to ask why
Is it too obvious to ask why on earth, instead of putting them in between the wands, the planners didn’t simply put them on the kerb, with suitables length of chain or rope joining them, to form an attractive and nonintrusive barrier?
I don’t think that’s the bit
I don’t think that’s the bit at issue, is it? Aren’t they referring to the big orange thing?
They are, but I think Rendel
They are, but I think Rendel means that they could have put the planters on the footpath with chains between them, rather than on the other side of the bike lane. I think that someone would end up tripping over the chain though, so it would probably be worse than the kerb on its own. It’s a really badly designed bike lane. It runs from the far end that you can see in the picture up to a four way junction. It doesn’t link to any other bike lane and is really a bit pointless. That stretch of road is supposed to be for buses, deliveries, disabled drivers and permit holders only.
mdavidford wrote:
Yes, so I’m suggesting, as Beatnik69 correctly states below, they could have placed the planters on the kerb in place of the big orange thing. Fair point about people tripping over chains between them but then maybe they could just have invested in a few more of them, added to the ones there already they probably wouldn’t have cost more than the plastic barriers, maybe even less.
OK, that makes more sense.
OK, that makes more sense. But I think is missing the point that the whole thing was meant to be permeable to foot traffic – there wasn’t originally meant to be a barrier there at all. And if they’d just had the planters kerbside, with no barrier, that would probably just have made things worse by disguising the kerb drop even more.
Presumably the planters were added to the area with the wands with the thinking that that would make that a more attractive and nonintrusive barrier (to motor vehicles).
Rendel Harris wrote:
… they didn’t fix the height difference and indeed kerb between the cycle path and footway so that people were less likely to trip? (Assuming that people are tripping there, and not trying to step up / down on a flat white lane at the other side of the cycle path? )
(Yes – it is too obvious. The answer is “money” – raising the cycle path would cost more as – like most places this is done – it’s just a chunk of the existing road with some paint on it. Albeit there’s better protection and separation from the rest of the road now.
And people would doubtless still trip over, because “change” and we run on memory/autopilot far more than most of us like to admit.)