“Designed by people who hate you having a bike”: Some of the worst cycle parking out there?; Pro cycling sleuths reckon they’ve found a picture of the crack on Pogačar’s frame + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
"Designed by people who hate you having a bike": Some of the worst cycle parking out there?
Brace yourselves. I hereby present for your Wednesday entertainment, disgust, eye-rolling and head-shaking… this bike parking…
How to lock a bike here ?
by
u/United-Contact-1489 in
londoncycling
Yep, if your bike isn’t a thin, featherweight road bike, has mudguards, panniers or anything else that feasibly might be quite practical for commuting, you need not apply. With one arm, hoist your ride into the single locking rack, with the other contort your lock around the wheel, all without losing grip of your bike that’s solely now being held up by your other hand. Don’t dare take a second to readjust, on you go… then try to get a second lock around your other wheel and frame, before collapsing in an exhausted heap on the ground.
It’s the same sort of profile of bike parking that makes taking your bicycle on a train an often quite miserable experience, or near-impossible for many riders with heavier or wider rides, essentially anything that isn’t a lightweight road bike.
> Worst bike racks — from the useless to utterly unusable places to park your bicycle
However, here we’re not talking about the limited space broom cupboard that train bike parking is found in, we’re talking about what looks like a quite spacious basement of an office or apartment building.
As the Reddit user who shared the picture explained, they’re “not sure if I’m being stupid here, but how am I meant to lock my bike here?”
“You can only really lock the front wheel and not the frame which isn’t great… am I missing a trick here? The room is accessed by a fob which is good, I guess.”
If, and it’s a big if, the extent of bike parking you wanted to provide was this style of single-wheel rack (as much as I dislike the ‘wheel bender’ for anything more than quick trips into shops) then surely you may as well just offer this at ground level so people could at least access it more easily and find easier options for additional locks around the rear wheel and frame? The mid-air single wheel option almost feels intentionally challenging… you half expect Alex Horne to appear with an envelope asking celebrities to lock their bike here to win points off Greg Davies.
The assessment of the people who saw it on Reddit was it’s “designed by people who hate you having a back mudguard”, or “designed by people who have never used a bike”, or maybe just “designed by people who hate you having a bike”.
“Notorious” climate protester causes crash in Belgian race after sitting on road in front of charging peloton
Carnage at Catalunya: Remco launches attack on the flat, Vingegaard follows before refusing to work... only for Belgian to crash in final kilometre as two-time Tour winner caught 150m before the finish
The results sheet of stage three of the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya will tell you Ineos Greandiers’ fast finisher Dorian Godon took his second win of the week ahead of British riders Ethan Vernon and Noah Hobbs. What the results sheet won’t show you is the dramatic conclusion to what otherwise looked like it was heading for a standard sprint finale. It all began with an attack in the crosswinds…
Remco Evenepoel attacks in the crosswinds! ⚡️
Only Jonas Vingegaard chooses to respond and the two are off the front of the bunch 😱 pic.twitter.com/Iz8e763bGL
— Cycling on TNT Sports (@cyclingontnt) March 25, 2026
From there, Remco Evenepoel and Jonas Vingegaard were away, the Belgian growing increasingly frustrated with his rival’s unwillingness to help. The pair made it to the final kilometre clear, only for Evenepoel to crash on a roundabout in the final couple of hundred metres. Vingegaard told the TV cameras afterwards that he’d then decided to sit up as he didn’t want to take advantage… although he was only eventually passed with around 200-150m to go.
In the sprint, Godon was by far the fastest, taking his second stage win of the week as a bloodied Evenepoel shook his head back at the roundabout.
El ciclismo es impredecible 🤯🤯🤯
Evenepoel se cae cuando acariciaba la victoria, Vingegaard se deja ir y el líder Godon se impone en Vila-seca.
🚴♂️ Lo has visto en @Eurosport_ES y @StreamMaxES. #VoltaCatalunya105 pic.twitter.com/9Vf0sB2iPK
— Eurosport.es (@Eurosport_ES) March 25, 2026
“He wasn’t happy with me today but we have our tactics,” Vingegaard said. This looks like one that will rumble on.
POV: You go for a bike ride in the Netherlands
Major new Belfast walking and cycling bridge put on hold
According to Highways News, the Ormeau Bridge project, a proposal for a new walking and cycling bridge in Belfast has been put on “indefinite” hold.
This is reportedly due to ongoing legal proceedings around how infrastructure projects are approved and funded.
Belfast City Council’s chief executive is not impressed, saying the decision makes “no sense”.
Crash barrier to be introduced on dual carriageway after years of drivers illegally parking on cycle path
"Great news: plans to 'design safer streets' for women. Bad news: no mention of women cycling"
The Department for Transport and Active Travel England have announced nationwide plans to design safer streets. It comes as nine in ten women report feeling unsafe while walking at night.
The government says new guidance will be issued to councils to help them consider how to make their streets safer for women and girls.
Inadequate lighting, poorly maintained routes, personal safety fears and antisocial behaviour were identified as key barriers, with the majority of respondents saying they would feel safer walking in their neighbourhoods if key issues were addressed.
New government guidance will be published in 2026 alongside training sessions in the spring, outlining how local authorities can design their streets to be safer for women and girls.
The plans have, of course, been welcomed, although some have questioned why cycling journeys are not part of the consideration.
The London Cycling Campaign wrote: “Great news: plans to ‘design safer streets’ for women. Bad news: no mention of women cycling.”
“The release suggests the guidance will emphasise the importance of ‘walking routes along roads that are generally busy and overlooked by other people and CCTV’,” the campaign continued. “This rather misses the point that roads that are just busy with traffic aren’t safer. Studies show LTNs drop crime. Motor traffic goes down, but footfall goes up. So ‘busy’ isn’t itself a good thing: busy with people rather than cars *is*.
“Similarly, women’s freedom to walk, cycle, without fear of crime or abuse shouldn’t be tied to sticking to main roads with lots of CCTV. Most women don’t live on main roads. What’s needed for inclusive safety design is door to door treatments so entire journeys are well lit, high footfall, feel safe, and there’s less opportunity in general for abuse, crime etc. This means not just main road treatments, but also neighbourhood ones, increasing walking, cycling, reducing motor traffic.”
Thoughts? You can read the full announcement on the Gov.UK website here.
"We’ve had to rein her back": Keely Hodgkinson using cycling to become a faster runner
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The coaches of Keely Hodgkinson and Georgia Hunter Bell have told the Guardian how cycling is a major part of two of Britain’s star athletes’ training programmes. It’s hardly a secret but still, in the aftermath of Hodgkinson, Hunter Bell and Molly Caudery stunning the indoor world championships with three gold medals in a magical half-hour window, Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows have spoken about where bike work fits in their athletes’ running programmes.
“We’ve had to rein her back,” Meadows said of Hodgkinson’s cycling. The Olympic champion has started switching some of her endurance runs for bike rides, her coach explaining that one-hour spins have often escalated into 90 minutes plus, hence the reining in.
“It’s just great, though,” coach Meadows continued. “She finds it so boring on a static bike or the elliptical [machine] in the gym. If she wants to carry on in this sport for a decade or more, we have to let her enjoy life.”
Painter added: “It’s up to each individual. Some girls love swimming, some like cycling. As long as they’re giving me, say, 45 minutes on a bike, it’s as good as 30-35 minutes on the running, but without the impact. Then when we run on the track and we’re doing sessions we feel sharper and the sessions are better.”
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Is he retired? Isn't he? Is Tomorrowland all part of the spring training campaign?
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1993 Tour de France bike vs modern superbike - are new bikes faster and more comfortable?
Pro cycling sleuths reckon they've found a picture of the crack on Pogačar's frame
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Is that the crack that sent the cycling world into meltdown yesterday?
Pogačar fell on his non-drive side, but maybe there was a second impact? Former pro Tom Danielson reckons “that type of break is likely from someone landing on top of him when he was on the ground. The carbon there is really thin and if something or someone hits it directly there it will crack like that”.
> Did Tadej Pogačar win Milan-San Remo on a cracked Colnago?
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Say what you will about the braking efficiencies of both rim and disc brakes. Or of seemingly having only one pedal and crank. Or of the angled-in brake hoods on flat bars. Let alone the rearward facing handlebars. I'm so impressed though, by the chain that traverses one side of the bike, to switch side somewhere around the dropouts, to the other side of the bike! Every side's a drivetrain side!
@chrisonabike We live in terraced houses, so no garage.
@Shades They have a 5 bedroom house for the 4of them (2 parents, 2 children). Admittedly, the hall isn't wide but it's not as if they're short of space. I keep 2 of my bikes in the cellar.
In other news, researchers prove beyond doubt that water is indeed wet.
And why are they not heavily de-starred by NCAP? The rot started with the Nissan Qashqai which used loopholes on bonnet safety regulations that didn't adequately include the headlight lenses, they put deep soft tissue penetrating ridges into the lens mouldings that increased their height and the aggressiveness of the look of the car but made it much more dangerous to any vulnerable roaduser. Unfortunately the raised stance and batmobileish looks appealed to buyers, particularly women and the whole industry surged in that direction. Now much worsened with the seeming unstoppability of the Range Rover look.
@mdavidford Most importantly, will someone name a range of exotic (well, exotic for the 1980s) snacks after me?
@mctrials23 Nerdy sort of fact, if the RTW challenge was to cycle round the equator, which would make sense in a way with that being the longest circumference of our oblate spheroid, it would only take 8,714 kilometres of cycling as the rest of the 40,075km would be by boat.
Two points. A few months I read an article about racing one of these ultra’s and the person (I can’t recall who) said that the route they used would not be safe today due to geopolitics. Secondly, 10 years ago I was chatting to Chris Bennett in NZ about his hope to race around the world. He was on about riding way up into Norway to get a load of European miles in rather than some hot places in Asia. Last year he achieved a finish in 129+ days aged 66 but he did not stick to the plan he outlined all those years ago. I believe the problem with what counts as unsupported over that time or distance is difficult to monitor. One example would be staying at a friend’s house overnight in Australia - does that count as support?
"Tough titties losers. It's natural selection. I am a high achieving go-getter and can afford a huge high up SUV to keep me and my family safe. My kids will no doubt go on to be high achieving go-getters with even bigger SUVs. Anyone who is not a high achiever deserves a bit of jeopardy to spur them on. Bring back Margaret Thatcher! Although, I have a lot of time for Farage!"
25 thoughts on ““Designed by people who hate you having a bike”: Some of the worst cycle parking out there?; Pro cycling sleuths reckon they’ve found a picture of the crack on Pogačar’s frame + more on the live blog”
You’ve misunderstood – those aren’t for locking your bike to – they’re for hanging your wet cycling gear on.
Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody cycles when it rains (and carbon melts in water) everyone who’s a cyclist themselves knows that.
Aha, I did wonder. Even a blunt hacksaw could be used to cut through one of those in a few minutes
@mdavidford are you sure? Perhaps the bikes are balanced on top? (Didn’t Rendel share a picture of his hall bike storage with part-way-up-the-wall cycles?)
And proud of it, not sure I’d recommend it for public use though, it might be a bit of a liability in terms of cracking heads on pedals et cetera…
Ah, good – somebody else who has rejected the shackles of lampshades
Edison bulbs, look so good and are so suited to a Victorian house it’d be a shame to hide their light under a bushel, as it were.
The Instagram image doesn’t appear and the “View this post on Instagram” is not registering as being a link. I’m going to blame it on Instagram being rubbish, but it could also be some new fancy feature on the road.cc website that has broken the embed code.
If you hover your mouse over the text at the bottom of the Instagram image, such as “A post shared by @lucascyclingblog”, you’ll find that the mouse pointer changes to show a link is available to click on.
Thanks, you are correct: The thing that doesn’t look like a link works fine and the thing that looks like a link does nothing. Of course!
Pogacar said of the crash that someone else fell on his bike, a Vlab rider, who had to untangle himself before Pogi could retrieve his bike. Someone falling onto a carbon frame could certainly crack a seatstay; it’s the likely explanation.
Where’s the fun in settling for likely explanations, though?
Many moons ago, I cracked the seat stays of a Colnago in the same place.
It was in the Tour Series (a wet night a Portsmouth) and it was a great big Irish national rider that went into my bike.
Long story short, I was dropped from the team for the next round (my home town), which put me in a proper bad mood and I didn’t clean the bike for a good month afterwards. Rode it, raced it throughout that period.
Then I found the crack. I thought, seeing as its already done a month, I’m sure its fine and left it for the rest of the season.
It’s a really low stress area on the frame, so unlikely to fail entirely.
I reckon those racks were put up high because bikes resting on both tyres would foul the door visible in the background. It’s still horrible.
“How will the £8.5m Albert Bridge repair be funded?
About 15,000 cars and light vans are having to find alternative river crossings each day while the bridge remains shut to traffic, though it is still open to pedestrians and cyclists.”
So the mode of transport is the differentiator/discriminator.
Uses a motor – no human.
Uses footwear/bike – human.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y8ryz007ro
@Mitsky – no, they really meant “cars and light vans”! It’s “sympathy for the diesel” (other power sources now available).
(It’s no extra effort to any humans inside – they just sit there; for in most vehicles even the navigation is now automated).
Not sure I trust the expertise of the council official who, in your link to report, describes Albert as “this beautiful Grade II* listed building”, last time I rode over it it was notably lacking in walls and a roof and the other appurtenances that generally define a building.
Bit slow with the athletics cyclists story – Keely and co have been posting pics etc out on the bike for ages.
Drum and Bass on the Bike is in Southampton on Sunday, starting from Guildhall Square at 2pm.
https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/25962941.drum-bass-bike-dj-announces-date-southampton-ride/
Unfortunately I can’t make it this time, but it was a lot of fun last time I did it.
Froomey back to L’Alpe du Huez where he held his retirement party. Did he intentionally omit to dispatch invitations to the pro pelotons?
A penny farthing would slot into that bike rack prefectly.
At the Volta a Catalunya the climbing is always straight out the back door.
I applaud the people who installed those bike racks – I’d even go so far as to propose a toast…
I like that. Shame I can’t just click on like!
You have to click on the heart – not the bit beside it that actually looks like a link. Obviously.