“Everything is being made for cyclists but you don’t see many of them”: Locals claim “nightmare” cycle lanes forcing drivers to rat-run; Bikes at polling stations; Delgado weighs in on Seixas; + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
“Everything is being made for cyclists but you don’t see many of them”: Locals claim “nightmare” cycle lanes forcing drivers to rat-run on residential streets – but motorists warned to “be a bit more patient”
It turns out Restore Britain’s Rupert Lowe isn’t the only one keen to circulate the myth of the ‘lesser spotted cyclist’ this election week.
On Tuesday, we reported that the MP for Great Yarmouth criticised a recently installed cycle lane in Gorleston-on-Sea, claiming it “has ruined a perfectly good road” and that it’s “very rarely used”.
“I’ve declared bicyclists a rare breed here,” Lowe declared, seemingly as part of his bid to restore Americanisms to British political debate.
And up in Leeds, Lowe’s bike blindness appears to have caught on, as locals criticised the local authority’s recent attempts to improve the city’s cycling infrastructure, branding the new cycle lanes a “nightmare” for drivers.
Leeds City Council says it has introduced 113 miles of cycle lanes over the last decade, with its latest scheme, at Dawsons Corner near Pudsey – a huge, busy junction used by 1,200 cyclists and pedestrians a day in its unprotected form – set to separate cyclists and drivers in a bid to make it “safer and more reliable for everyone who uses it”.
However, speaking to the BBC, some residents have criticised previous attempts at making Leeds’ streets safer for cyclists, including on Meanwood Road. A bike lane was added and the pavement widened on the road in 2024, meaning some junctions were closed to motorists travelling in certain directions – a move, some claim, has led to rat-running on residential streets.
“The biggest change for me has been the removal of a left-hand turn which means the only way to get home is to drive through the residents’ streets,” local resident Hannah told the BBC.
“I try to distribute routes on different days to spread the burden, but it is a nightmare.”
Meanwhile, another motorist, Michael Phillis, said the new road layout was “ill thought out”, while also catching a case of the Ruperts.
“You can’t get where you need to be going, everything is being made for cyclists but you don’t see many of them,” he said.
Unsurprisingly, Lowe’s old gang, Reform UK, got in on the act, too.
“We’re not against cycle lanes. But we have cycle lanes that are not well used,” a spokesperson for the party told the BBC.
“We need to get rid of the net zero madness that’s ideologically driven to eradicate cars.”
The Conservatives also weren’t averse to bashing the Labour-run council’s cycling plans, saying: “Too often these schemes have made it harder for residents, businesses and visitors to get around, whilst doing little to tackle the real everyday transport challenges people face.”
However, not everyone followed the Rupert Lowe line of thinking when questioned by the Beeb’s roving reporter.
According to window cleaner Gary Hurlstone, the work on Meanwood has made the streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
“It’s an improvement for pedestrians without a doubt, but not for drivers – they’re going to have to learn to be a bit more patient, I am afraid.”
Good luck with that, Gary.
And finally, Martin Bennett-Stanley from the Leeds Cycling Campaign was cautiously optimistic about the city’s approach to cycling, just over a year before the Tour de France visits Leeds for the second time in 13 years.
“You have to give the local authority credit for including cycling and walking in the plans,” he said.
“It’s not the standard that we see in countries like Holland, where junctions get buried, but it is a step in the right direction.”
Vuelta Femenina stage 5 final crash takes out van der Breggen
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Stage 5 of the Vuelta Femenina reached a chaotic conclusion as heavy rain and crashes hit the roads of Spain. Mischa Bredewold (SD Worx-Protime) won stage 5, with teammate Lotte Kopecky in second place.
Most dramatically, a huge crash on a wet road just 1.5km from the finish line took out SD Worx-Protime’s GC leader Anna van der Breggen, forcing her to finish in 100th on the stage. The setback will undoubtedly hit her team’s strategy as the Vuelta Femenina heads into the high mountains.
Cow dung blamed as diarrhoea, fever, and vomiting hit the peloton ahead of the Giro d’Italia
> Cow dung blamed as diarrhoea, fever, and vomiting hit the peloton ahead of the Giro d’Italia
The best and worst gravel bike upgrades (according to Liam)
> The best and worst gravel bike upgrades (according to Liam)
Olympic cyclist Jack Carlin invites riders to join him for 24-hour challenge
Scottish track cyclist and four-time Olympic medallist Jack Carlin has announced that he’s taking part in Cycle the Circuit, a 24-hour cycling event at Scotland’s Knockhill Racing Circuit on 2-3 July – and you, yes you, could join him.
Carlin has already enrolled three fellow athletes for the event: Lewis Stewart (Commonwealth champion and Paralympian), Kyle Gordon (Commonwealth athlete) and Mark Stewart (Commonwealth champion and Olympian).
“This is such a unique opportunity for cycling enthusiasts, or for anyone seeking a challenge where they can train hard in the coming months then really feel that benefit in July when it all comes together,” said Carlin. “The setting, the atmosphere, the cause and the nature of the event make this one of a kind.”
The challenge will raise funds for SAMH (Scottish Action for Mental Health), and it has the backing of its Ambassador, Sir Chris Hoy. Registration includes hot food and snacks for 24 hours, a camping slot, a timing chip, a t-shirt, and a finisher’s medal.
MyWhoosh set to introduce random drug tests
MyWhoosh is taking virtual cycling to new levels of realism with the introduction of an anti-doping and integrity initiative. According to The Guardian, The free-to-use platform, which boasts hundreds of thousands of users and hosts the UCI Esports World Championships, will kick off the programme on May 10th and start testing on May 17th.
Obviously virtual testing isn’t a thing (yet!), but MyWhoosh will require the selected virtual athletes to stay in their stated location for three hours so International Doping Tests & Management (IDTM) can visit them in person and take urine, blood, or dried blood samples for analysis. The initial pool will include 700 athletes, and the aim is to test 10% of them a year.
With $5 million a year handed out in prizes, MyWhoosh has become a big deal – but virtual cycling is notoriously open to abuse and deception. The platform already uses many methods to prevent mechanical cheating, but this is the first time it’s taken anti-cheating measures into the real world.
If you were considering moving to Antarctica with a Wahoo Kickr and several tonnes of EPO, now would be the time to do it.
Is Seixas ready for the Tour de France? Perico Delgado has his doubts …
Paul Seixas might be the next Tour de France superstar, but 1988 winner Pedro Delgado has revealed his concerns about the 19-year-old French wunderkind. While he has no doubts about Seixas’ cycling abilities, Delgado is more uncertain about how he’ll respond to the intense pressure of the Tour.
“I don’t know to what extent he might end up having a really bad experience over these three weeks of racing, because saying there is no pressure is a lie,” Delgado said in a video on his YouTube channel. “I think he will do the first week well, and then we’ll have to see about the second and third weeks — the routine, the monotony of the day-to-day … the first week is joy, the second is when the fatigue starts, and by the third, you feel like you’re dying.”
No pressure then, Seixas.
Bikes head to polling stations
Hello! My name’s Henry, and this is my first day covering the live blog. You may have seen my name around road.cc before, but this is the first time Jack and Ryan have let me loose on something live and unedited. They really don’t know what they’ve let themselves in for.
Are we still doing #bikesatpollingstations ?
— Jack Thurston (@jackthurston.bsky.social) 7 May 2026 at 09:21
First up, millions are heading to the polls today in Britain, with nail-biting parliamentary elections in Scotland and Wales, and local elections in England. In a tradition started by Cycling UK, bikes are taking their riders to polling stations to allow them to vote, and getting them to post pics on Blue Sky. This is peak Blue Sky.
The missing Lynskey?
> US titanium specialist is latest bike brand to file for bankruptcy
Someone actually got the Wout van Aert Paris-Roubaix beach towel
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In case you missed it: Team Visma Lease a Bike celebrated Wout van Aert’s victory at the Paris-Roubaix with a … €35 beach towel.
Now, Instagram user latchy3 has actually received (and maybe even bought) the towel. It came in a huge box and it certainly lives up to Visma’s description of being a “thin beach towel, so you can bring it easily everywhere you go.”
You can spend $14,000 on bolts now
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Are you unhappy with the performance of your bolts? Do you have a spare $14,000 sitting around? If so, then parts manufacturer Fegve has the product for you in the shape of a complete upgrade kit for DuraAce or Ultegra.
According to Panda Podium on Instagram, well-off riders can already purchase a Damascus titanium stem cap bolt for $400, but the company has now expanded the range to provide everything you need to keep your components from flying off your bike, including stem clamps.
Apparently the construction of Damascus titanium, which involves forge-welding layers of titanium alloys, results in a material that’s lightweight, durable, and uniquely vibrant and psychedelic, and definitely doesn’t look like something you’d get for £4 from AliExpress.
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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?".
27 thoughts on ““Everything is being made for cyclists but you don’t see many of them”: Locals claim “nightmare” cycle lanes forcing drivers to rat-run; Bikes at polling stations; Delgado weighs in on Seixas; + more on the live blog”
Leeds is famously the biggest city in Western Europe without a mass transit system like a tram or metro. Driving is a pain. The cycle lanes are very promising, but given that it was the original “motorway city”, with decades of car-centric thinking, there is a long way to go.
For what it is worth, the stretch north of the University, a key commuting route, often has more cyclists than motorists at peak times, on the new and as yet unfinished cycle lanes.
(Long ago Leeds dweller here – it was “the quick and the brave” back then…) Yep, there’s a single radius (WNW) where “heavy rail” works as transit, sort of. (Or north/south in Bradford).
But it could be so much better. Even allowing for it being moderately hilly, cycling ought to be more of a thing (especially with the huge increase in central residential density over the last 20 years). And there should be better alternatives to driving than the buses, which could be sluggish.
Here in Edinburgh we’re also struggling. The city is growing fast by design, much of that around the periphery. We’ve a single-line “tram network”. Efforts to expand this are planned * to take from the cycling/walking (and green) space, with little detail about alternative provision. (The naive might think they’d create that *first*…)
* We’re still awaiting an evaluation of the recent new tram route consultation.
Hello Henry – welcome to the Live Blog comments – you really don’t know what you’ve let yourself in for…
😁
I think people not knowing what they’ve let themselves in for is going to be the theme of the day 😬
New BBC captcha
Click all videos with a cyclist in them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c9wep78epz8o
“Driver arrested after chasing down child cyclist on footpath”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c9wep78epz8o
Not a pedal cycle, but motorised.
For those of you who have been following the issue of me being prosecuted after swearing at a driver who was filming me whilst trying to run me off the road, this matter has now concluded:
In sum, after 19 months, went to court, so-called-victim didn’t show up, case thrown out. A waste of time and money which could have been avoided if the police officers involved weren’t prejudiced liars.
Glad it got thrown out.
A waste of time and money which could have been avoided if the police officers involved weren’t prejudiced liars
Liars they certainly are, but which particular prejudice are you referring to? Anti-cyclist sentiment? That’s also certainly true in general
Exactly that – a prejudice that is basically cyclists shouldn’t in the road, a victim blaming mentality that anything that happens to cyclists is basically their fault for being cyclists.
It’s not exactly lying when you have a per-determined mindset and actually believe what you are saying!
I’ve just looked back at Forum comments about your case. Was the CPS ever involved or was the whole farce completely orchestrated by the understaffed, overworked blameless police?
CPS were involved – it did go to court. But my point is that the police are largely to blame, for presenting false evidence, and for failing to investigate my argument that the whole thing was instigated by someone deliberately threatening me and filming me. For example, they didn’t ask the alleged ‘victim’ about their phone use. The CPS are to blame as well, as it seems that they didn’t actually listen to the interview transcripts but only read the police officer’s statements. As far as I can tell.
Some police officers are great. Some are mediocre. Some are actively malicious. The problem with the system is that the malicious ones can thrive.
Thank goodness justice has finally been served. Your accuser should be charged with wasting police time and the police themselves with misconduct in public office, but it won’t happen of course.
Thank you for the update. I am very pleased that it is finally over but it must have been a very worrying 19 months.
Will they eventually be rolling this out to real people as well?
There are real people on the internet?!
I’m surprised they’re bothering to check humans – wasn’t there some virtual doping a while back?
RE Reform * talking points “We need to get rid of the net zero madness that’s ideologically driven to eradicate cars.”
Isn’t the one serious threat to motoring as we know it not cyclists or central planning madness or even concerns about pollution, the environment or energy use…
… it’s motoring as we know it!
It’s the fact that motoring is very space-inefficient, resource-hungry, dangerous … and we’ve done such a brilliant job of making it easier, subsidising it, and advertising it. So we now have “mass motoring”. And the ability of any of us idiots to now add to the problem is possibly the only thing capable of causing enough pain and inconvenience to drivers (and eventually society as a whole) that something changes.
* Reform and the “right-leaning” tend to be the most obvious – but playing “stop the war on the motorist” is done by members from all parties, except maybe the Greens (mostly).
Seixas must win this year’s TdF. France needs a victor who will boost morale and brighten the future. France needs to see “la vie en jaune”. Expect Macron to spend three weeks in the DS car and share Seixas’ hotel room. Macron loves winners.
I did cycle to vote today – but shocked to find out that voting in Milton Keynes is no longer anonymous. This, I had thought, was a key tenet of the democratic system. But not anymore! Your ballot paper has a unique QR code that is scanned and matched to your polling card. A slippery slope…
https://www.milton-keynes.gov.uk/your-council-and-elections/elections-and-register-vote/central-voting-hub-trial
Don’t think there’s really anything new there. Any time I’ve voted they’ve asked for my name, marked me off on a register, and recorded the number of the ballot paper issued against it. It sounds like this is just removing the paperwork from that process.
Yes, just looked into it and you’re right. Just seemed a bit weird having it all scanned digitally there-and-then.
Having everything on a database, rather than paper records, does make this perhaps easier to abuse in the future.
The UK has always had a secret ballot but that’s not the same as completely anonymous. It’s necessary to know to whom each ballot paper belonged in case of fraud so you can be asked to confirm the veracity of your vote. By law all papers must be stored for a year and a day for checking in case of challenges.
(By “has always” I mean in modern times, obviously not back in the days of rotten boroughs etc)
Always been the way that the voting slip could be traced to the voter. They used to write the number on.
You’d have to go through every single one to find it though!
This is rather easier though.
I live on Meanwood Road and ride by bike up and down it a couple times everyday dropping my kids off at various places. It’s all very good them having improved a single junction, but the rest of the road is a hodgebodge of mostly unmarked and undivided road. There is one bit up the end where they have a specific bike lane against the flow of traffic where it goes one way, but the rest of it is pretty horrific. I’ve seen 3 accidents over the last couple of years where bikes have been cleaned up by cars turning right into them. So, it’s all very good them fixing up one junction, but the road as a whole is by no means a nice bit of cycling infrastructure. Just half a mile away, running parallel to it they have done up Otley Road, which is divided for a few miles. But it’s not where I need to go for anything! So things are a little better, but to make a city really great for cyclists you can’t just do little bits here and there – it needs to be on every main artery for the full length – otherwise people won’t feel safe and the little bits that do get done up won’t be used because the rest is crap!