Council has "no intention to enforce" parking restrictions in segregated cycle lane where cars are parked bumper to bumper

I wonder if Bolton council would also not take action if a whole bunch of cyclists cycled line abreast down the motorway, blocking the whole carriageway for all the motor vehicles...?

What hope is there when the authorities are this useless?!

Experience tells me that Bolton is not particularly cycle friendly.

Perhaps the council should return the funding for the scheme. It's obviously not going to work if they won't do something to make it fit for purpose.
Anyone up for a "critical mass" style demo everyday at school opening and closing times??

Apparently Bolton School are proud of how many of their children have done bikeabilty training!

This road is a fucking nightmare to ride on and always has been. And I regularly ride DCs, so I'm not exactly a shrinking violet when it comes to riding busy roads. It's a de facto motorway (or at least feels like it with the speeds some of the stoned Horwich boy racers tool up and down it) and I thubk I've experienced more close passes on there than I have the A6 (which, considering the fact it goes through Little Hulton, Walkden and Swinton is quite some statement).

There isn't a cat's chance in hell I'd ride on that road with it narrowed that much due to a shit bike lane full of parked cars, which, I suspect, was Bolton's plan all along.

A lot of 'key workers' there.  I would suggest about 50 cyclists turn up and just stop in the road (both sides) and completely block traffic.  Do that for 30 minutes a day and the problem will get solved.  

I wonder why children don't cycle to school anymore?

lanes running along Chorley New Road have been improved as part of a Government-funded initiative 

The comments suggest this is a blackshirt council- I can't be be bothered to find out, but it's certainly behaving like one. This council, and the government behind it, undoubtedly claim to be 'in favour of cycling', but the qualification to this pseudo-support is less often stated: just as long as no motorists feel they are being disadvantaged or slowed up. The council and government have colluded in spending public money on covert comfy-parking for toffs with children at private schools, in the same way as £billions has been spent on rescue funding for private hospitals.

Quote:

“This is a trial and will be assessed to see its effectiveness. There is no intention to enforce at this time.

Am I understanding this comment correctly? How will they assess effectiveness if the trial is scuppered cos they won't enforce the lane?

On the plus side, it is one more photo to add to 'why I don't use cycle lanes'.

This is a curious story. At our end of Bolton there is a parking enforcement officer on a moped who is very diligent, and would be very happy that these folk on Chorley New Road made their job so easy. However, you can probably guess the demographics of Bolton School from the type of parked vehicles, and might hazard a guess as to their sense of entitlement, and how likely they are to be supporters of the party currently leading the council. 
 

On the other hand, I am delighted our cyclops has opened- I'm tempted to go down and do a few laps round what used to be a hideous scary junction.

"This is a trial and will be assessed to see its effectiveness. There is no intention to enforce at this time."

I think i can save them some time by predicting exactly how this will go then: Traffic will worsen as the road has been narrowed by a lane, and safety won't improve, and may actually get worse since cyclists will now have to deal with dangerous overtaking, and undertaking from the lane to the left of them.

Might one suggest that affected riders simply cycle really slowly past the offending cars in the middle of the road. Might encourage more action moving forward... Just saying! 😉

Organise Chaos! Lots of local cyclists get together and cycle up and down the main road, 1 mtre from the parked cars. Slowly. The cars on the main road will be held up. Someone will complain and the cops will arrive. The cycle lane parking mob will then, hopefully, be 'spoken to'. I know, ridiculous idea!

They've created an awesome parking lane as passing cars are less likely to ping their wing mirrors. Also, they've made cycling on the road more dangerous by reducing the carriageway and probably made the path less safe as people try and park their giant phallic status symbols between the wands!

At a time of considerable financial stress the council is literally refusing to pick up money that Enforcement Officers are tripping over in the street.

They must be thinking the wands perform some magic.

"This is a trial and will be assessed to see its effectiveness. There is no intention to enforce at this time."

So at the end of trial, they'll say "see, the bicycle lanes didn't help. We'll close them", when the reason they didn't help was that they didn't make it possible to use them.

... But at least they spent some money from the emergency active travel funding, so that there is less money for other projects.