“Take the red lights away, they don’t use them either!” Drivers urge council to “get rid” of city’s cycle lanes – but others ask, “What bike lanes?” and complain about having to pass cyclists safely in bizarre anti-cycling bingo + more on the live blog

I regret to inform everyone… the Oxford Mail’s at it again.

Just over a week ago, the local newspaper incited one of the more bizarre rounds of anti-cycling bingo we’ve ever seen, by randomly – or at least with the sole purpose of driving some angry engagement – asking their Facebook followers, “How can cycling in Oxford be made safer?”

Of the hundreds of comments that flooded in, almost all of them exclusively engaged in classic victim-blaming, anti-cycling rhetoric, ranging from calls for cycling licences and tax, as well as measures designed to “force” people on bikes to always use cycle lanes, and claims about red lights, bright clothing, helmets, and headphones.

> Anti-cycling bingo bonanza: Drivers call for cycling to be banned to make it safer in bizarre social media exchange

And two Mail readers decided to take things a step further by arguing that the solution to making cycling safer in Oxford is simple – we should simply ban riding bikes. Easy (worryingly, those comments proved extremely popular, attracting the most ‘likes’ under the Mail’s post).

And now the paper is at it again, asking its readers: “Where would you like to see more cycle lanes in Oxford?”

Which, taken at face value, is a fair question.

Following the deaths of two cyclists, Dr Ling Felce and Ellen Moilanen, who were both fatally struck by lorry drivers in the space of three weeks in February 2022, the chair of local cycling campaign group Cyclox, Dr Alison Hill, called for more segregated cycle lanes to better protect people using bicycles to travel around the city.

Not that many of the 500 or so Facebook users who commented on the Mail’s post took that in consideration, of course.

Brace yourself for a bewildering exhibition I’m going to call Schrödinger’s Cycle Lanes, where there are – in the eyes of Oxford’s drivers – simultaneously too many bike lanes, which block up the roads, cause congestion, and aren’t used by cyclists anyway, and too few, forcing drivers to interact with cyclists and, God forbid, pass them safely.

So, where do the Oxford Mail’s readers want to see cycle lanes?

“Nowhere, most cyclist don’t use them!” wrote Sarah Needle. “Might as well take away the red traffic lights too – they don’t use those either!”

“In the middle of the Thames,” added Michael Holliday.

“ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE,” shouted Jordan Thornton. “Get rid of the existing ones for starters.”

“Blinking bikes are a nuisance, they don’t take any notice of traffic lights, half of them don’t have lights on when it’s dark, and they are dressed in black clothing so it’s difficult to see them,” said Frances Knight.

“They are definitely a law onto themselves, so no, we do not want more bike lanes. The other day we see [sic] a girl on a small skateboard in the middle of the road with a coach right behind her, my heart came up in my mouth, where was her mentally, she should have been stopped by the police. But of coarse [sic] they were nowhere around.”

Hmmm… Perhaps somebody needs to tell Frances that bikes aren’t skateboards aren’t the same…

> "One month, two dead cyclists": Oxford's cycling city sign defaced after second death

“It won’t matter as they will not use them, they just use the pavement,” wrote Billy Rankin.

“Only if cyclists have to use them, unlike the Lycra mob who seem to think, even the pre-existing wide lanes are beneath them,” said Sarah Gimigliano.

“Only other possible place you can put a cycle lane now in Oxford is the M40 as every other centimetre in Oxford is full of them,” added Ritesh Vyas. “In some cases they have taken over roads all together.”

Meanwhile, StuBoy Grizza (if that is indeed his real name) had a different take on the whole thing.

“What bike lanes? More shared roads now causing more hazard to drivers,” he said. “We’ve got the police telling us to give 1.5m space when passing a cyclist or we can get prosecuted!

“So where’s the prosecutions for cyclists who pass my car at two feet? Or those who run red lights and even knock pedestrians over on the pavement?”

Ah, the classic overtaking/filtering confusion. Top work StuBoy.

Thankfully, not everyone was piling in with nonsensical arguments against cycling infrastructure.

“Amazes me the hate on these posts!” noted Peter Haken. “First place is Eynsham to Botley, the road is extremely dangerous and let’s not even talk about the awful potholes.”

“We need to do what Amsterdam has done, what all these petrol heads don’t see is that they are the problem,” added Paul Thornton. “Nearly every car coming into Oxford in the morning has one person in it and it has hit saturation point.”

“So many places, but before they bother could they also make it a rule that they are not used as car parking spaces?” asked Tara Hurst.

“And maybe some of the haters in here could have a look at the condition of the cycle lanes – heavily potholed and cambered, barely a painted line on the road, and often ignored as drivers find them a convenient place to park.

“Possibly the same ones who then complain that cyclists don’t use the cycle lanes.”

In 25 days, the ‘proper’ road racing season will be underway, on the slippery cobbles and leg-sapping bergs of Opening Weekend and Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.

But after Wout van Aert’s pointed Gravaa cobbles test on Instagram, it’s clear that the classics phoney war is already well underway.

And now it’s Filippo Ganna’s turn to make a public statement of intent – by taking one of cycling’s most prestigious Strava KOMs, knocking Remco Evenepoel off the top spot in the process.

The Hour Record holder, who was second and sixth at the 2023 editions of Milan-Sanremo and Paris-Roubaix respectively, secured the KOM on the southern approach of the iconic Coll de Rates, the classic pro test ramp near the training camp hotspot of Calpe on Spain’s Costa Blanca.

In December, Tadej Pogačar famously blitzed his way up the climb’s northern side from Parcent, knocking 17 seconds off the previous best recorded time on Strava.

> “His training’s started well”: Tadej Pogačar obliterates famous Strava KOM – with help of lightning-fast UAE Team Emirates train – during 205km, five-and-a-half-hour winter ride

Now it’s the turn of Italian powerhouse Ganna to demonstrate his winter prowess – and his surprisingly sharp climbing legs – by snatching the crown on the approach from Tarbena, during a 140km, four hour, 36kph ride at the weekend that saw the Ineos Grenadiers man set a number of PBs and KOMs along the way.

According to his Strava account, Olympic team pursuit champion Ganna powered up the 5km climb – which averages a steady 5.6 per cent – in 10.10, knocking a second of double Olympic champion, Vuelta winner, and Tour podium finisher Evenepoel’s previous record.

The 28-year-old averaged 29.3kph on the Rates, which came almost 100km into his 140km training ride, which featured over 2,000m of elevation. He also set another KOM on the draggy 11km climb to Castels, beating Evenepoel’s time by almost a minute and a half in the process.

After this very healthy-looking block of training in Spain, Ganna is set to kick off his 2025 campaign tomorrow at the Étoile de Bessèges, as he builds towards another crack at Milan-Sanremo and Roubaix.

And judging by his climbing speed on the Rates, this year’s battle on the Poggio could be very interesting indeed…

> Property developer pays for £950,000 Dutch-style cycling roundabout to prioritise cyclists and improve safety... but furious locals still claim “nightmare” project is “wasting” taxes

The city looking beautiful this morning. If you want to encourage cycling, you need infrastructure like this. ♥️ London

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— Bob From Accounts 🚲 (@bobfromaccounts.bsky.social) February 2, 2025 at 12:16 PM