Mail and Telegraph suggest Birmingham cycle lane has somehow caused congestion despite zero change to motor vehicle capacity

Well done Anna.

UPDATE: The Telegraph are printing a correction tomorrow!!

UPDATE: The Telegraph are printing a correction tomorrow!!

UPDATE: The Telegraph are printing a correction tomorrow!!

I've complained to IPSO about this and they've asked the Telegraph to address the complaint. The Telegraph have removed the article for inaccuracy, but I've also asked then to print a retraction or correction - waiting to hear back about that. Daily Mail don't seem to have the same regulation....

From yesterdays local newspaper. It is the same road some 5 miles on from the Cycle lanes.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/officer-attacked-cop...

 I wonder if the Daily Nazis will write this up as

"since Police insist on arresting people on the road and getting themselves injured, people on social media have mentioned that congestion has increased. One local motorist said "It caused a load of traffic though, the road was blocked for a while which caused a backlog of traffic from the Scott Arms to town." We have contacted the council about this nuisance to our road users."

In all seriousness though, it is incidents like this and on the Aldridge Road, which is probably the biggest route leading off  the A34 for traffic, that actually causes a backlog all the way back. However for the ones deciding to moan in the local paper, they just see that they are sitting in a standstill next to the cycle lane and blame that rather then an RTA or breakdown or roadworks they don't actually encounter. 

BTW when Brum brings in their version of the Congestion charge, that road, which is also chocked going in on the other side without a bike lane, will be in it. I wonder what they will be moaning about then. 

The Telegraph: Employer and stalwart publisher of the dribblings of Boris Johnson, ever since he was sacked as a junior reporter by The Times for fabricating quotes.

The Mail: A newspaper for people too thick to understand the long words used to spread lying, reactionary nonsense in The Telegraph.

Both stuffed full of car adverts. Both big proponents of Brexit. Neither fit to be used even for wrapping fish and chips.

"A spokesperson for Birmingham City Council confirmed that the A34 remains a dual carriageway, except where it was always briefly single lane coming out of the city at a junction."

And that is because the road goes over a bridge over the canal, and they decided a few decades back that it simply would not take the weight of four lanes of traffic even if they widened and strengthened that bridge. Every ten years or so they’ve mucked about a bit with where the bus lane starts and stops, but the one thing they haven’t changed - cannot change - is the fact that the road is down to a single lane in each direction at that pinch point.

Not ridden the A34 cycle path yet (I might in a couple of weeks time) but I’ve often cycled in the bus lane. There are a couple of hairy parts where drivers decide that they want to use the bus lane too, a few hundred yards sooner than the road markings allow.

Cheers for that, I didn't know you could do a time thing on streetview.  Nice.

AlsoSomniloquism, any chance that you could come up with some streetview pics of before the cycle lane got put in?

I used to ride through Cannon Hill park every day for my job at the QE, I always found Birmingham to be nicer than getting about in Reading, which is nicer than Farborough and the bit of Surrey around Brookwood and Pirbright.  Only my opinion.

Journalists should have an obligation to create articles based on researched facts. If it is trivially proven that the people who hold the opinions the articles quote are in error, then there is no story.

Sadly, it doesn't come down to ethical standards, it comes down to lobby power, and the cycling lobby is not strong enough to repel this kind of trash.

As a resident who cycles the majority of that road I will add my tuppence. 

Firstly I will hold my hands up and state I don't use the lane due to my normal average speed and the handy bus lane still running next to it. It means I take my life in my own hands on the one roundabout I negotitate where the lane is but that it my responsibility. Unfortunately that means I make the idea of the lane look bad. However I also haven't noticed a clear increase in the amount of cyclists using it either but then most would have probably been pavement riding anyway before it was built.

The only "loss of capacity" is  actually in that picture shown in the Telegraph where the cycle lane took over the bus lane on that bridge so for about 50 metres the Buses and normal traffic merge. After that there are none and the traffic actually pictured is what would have been there whether the bike lane was there or not.

As mentioned it is a very selective picture but I do like the comment stating the bus lane and cycle lane was empty, obviously totally ignoring the fact that you rarely see buses and cycles traffic jamming in their respective lanes because they are a more efficient type of traffic. 

Why are newspapers and journalists not held to account? Why is there no law stopping them from printing lies like this (and far, far worse) and getting away with it time and time again? Why are they allowed to subvert and utterly ruin democracy the way they do? Why is there no one in power with the balls to stand up to them?