“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.”

Cycling tech brand Wahoo has pledged to only sponsor men’s teams with a women’s counterpart from now on, a move the company says it hopes will “promote equality and foster growth in professional cycling”, while “levelling the playing field and empowering female athletes on the global stage”.

Wahoo currently sponsors a range of women’s pro teams, including Lidl-Trek, Ceratizit-WNT, Human Powered Health, EF Education-Oatly, and Arkéa-B&B Hotels. Today’s pledge means that the American brand will no longer be able to back men’s-only pro teams, such as the Ineos Grenadiers.

As part of this initiative, Wahoo has also launched its ‘Embrace Every Moment’ YouTube video series, which follows three teams – Human Powered Health, EF Education-Oatly, and Lidl-Trek – behind the scenes during last year’s Tour de France Femmes.

“As we start the 2025 season at the Tour Down Under, it’s an ideal time to celebrate how far women’s cycling has come with Embrace Every Moment, and the important work still ahead,” Olympic road race champion Kristen Faulkner, featured in the EF video, released today, said in a statement.

“Some of my happiest moments are when I’m riding, and I want to share that joy with others. From the fans who show up at our races to the young girls who are just getting started on a bike, I hope my teammates and I can inspire more women and girls to embrace the sport of cycling. Together, we truly can achieve our dreams!”

Just because we’ve crowned our world champions and the classic stars are engaged in a training phoney war, doesn’t mean there aren’t a few more weeks of mud and knobbly tyres left before Opening Weekend… 

📆 Three more weeks of cyclocross!!

05/02 🇧🇪 Exact Cross Maldegem (Wednesday)
08/02 🇧🇪 Superprestige Middelkerke
09/02 🇧🇪 X2O Trofee Lille

15/02 🇧🇪 Exact Cross Sint-Niklaas
16/02 🇧🇪 X2O Trofee Brussels

23/02 🇧🇪 Internationale Sluitingsprijs Oostmalle pic.twitter.com/1Lmec13NJk

— Cyclocross24.com (@cyclocross24) February 4, 2025

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Here’s my ‘big’ prediction for the 2025 road season: Wout van Aert is going to finally win one of the big ones, the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix. Or possibly both.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. There’s a certain Mr Mathieu van der Poel – and in the case of the Ronde, Tadej Pogačar too – to take into consideration when it comes to the Belgian star breaking his duck at cycling’s biggest cobbled races.

But while his last-minute decision to race the ‘cross worlds on Sunday didn’t result in a rainbow jersey (let’s face it, even without his difficult start, Van Aert would have found it difficult to dislodge the flying Van der Poel in Liévin), it did demonstrate one thing: Wout van Aert is fired up for this season.

(Simon Wilkinson/SWpix.com)

He also appears to be happy with his winter training – otherwise, it would have been an easy decision to stick to the original plan and skip a high-profile head-to-head with Van der Poel – and ready to take on his career-long rival in April.

And to help with this Flanders-Roubaix charge, Van Aert has a little trick up his sleeve – Gravaa’s new version of its cobblestone-taming tyre pressure regulating system.

Officially launched last October, the Dutch brand’s self-inflating and deflating tyre system allows you to adjust and monitor tyre pressure while you’re riding, through a pump that’s integrated into the hubs, which Gravaa says will provide you with more speed, more comfort, and fewer punctures – while working wonders when you’re switching back-and-forth from smooth tarmac to rough, jagged cobbles in the spring classics.

> Wheels featuring self-inflating/deflating tyre system used by Marianne Vos to win Gravel World Championships now available to pre-order priced from £3,200

Van Aert’s Visma-Lease a Bike team first used the technology during the 2023 classics season, but it largely disappeared from view on the elite stage until October 2024, when the Belgian’s Visma colleague Marianne Vos used wheels with an updated Gravaa KAPS system during her victory at the UCI Gravel World Championships, earning her a 14th rainbow jersey.

And judging by the sixth slide of Van Aert’s Instagram update last night (below) – which featured a clip of the 30-year-old using the system to reduce his tyre pressure before entering a stretch of cobbles during a motorpacing session near his home in Herentals – the ability to inflate and deflate tyres on the go could well prove crucial in the fight against MVDP this year.

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Wout van Aert (@woutvanaert)

In the clip, Van Aert uses his Garmin bike computer to shift 3.4 and 3.7 bar to 2.4 and 2.7 bar as he prepares to hit the (albeit gentle enough) pavé. Ah, the modern world.

Also, did anyone else the motorbike rider’s ‘MATU’ licence plate? Is Van Aert already preparing to hang on to Mathieu’s wheel come Ronde day?

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