The UK has built thousands of kilometres of cycle lanes. The government counts them. Ministers cite them. The press reports them as evidence of progress.
But what if most of that infrastructure doesn’t actually work? What if a significant portion of UK bike lanes are not just inadequate, but actively making roads more dangerous for the cyclists they’re supposed to protect?
In this video I go to a cycle lane near where I live and measure it. What I find is either a mistake, a oversight, or a window into exactly how UK cycling policy actually operates, depending on how charitable you’re feeling.
Because here’s the problem with Britain’s cycling revolution: it was built on a measurement system that cannot tell the difference between a world-class separated cycle track and a painted white line too narrow to ride through. Both count as infrastructure. Both go in the spreadsheet. Both get reported to the minister on Friday afternoon as evidence that the money was well spent.
This is a video about cycle lane safety in the UK, but it’s also about something bigger. It’s about what happens when a government optimises for the audit rather than the outcome. When the evidence of investment gets treated as equivalent to the investment itself.
We look at LTN 1/20 the Department for Transport’s own design standard for cycling infrastructure, published in 2020, and ask why thousands of kilometres of existing UK bike lanes don’t meet it. We look at the door zone problem: cycle lanes painted directly into the path of opening car doors, where the design creates the danger and the law distributes the blame. We look at a University of Bath study that found drivers pass closer to cyclists when a painted cycle lane is present than when there’s no lane at all, and what that means for the safety case behind Britain’s cycling revolution.
And we look at what Chris Boardman, then serving as the government’s own national active travel commissioner, told a parliamentary committee in 2021 about how the UK counts cycling infrastructure. What he said was blunt. The coverage it got was minimal.
UK cycling infrastructure has expanded significantly on paper. On the road, the picture is more complicated. Bike lane backlash is growing, from cyclists who feel let down by provision that looks like protection but isn’t, and from drivers who’ve been told the roads have been fairly divided when the reality is considerably messier. The debate about whether bike lanes are making things worse is getting louder. This video is an attempt to go underneath that debate and find the structural reason it keeps happening.
If you’ve ever been doored, buzzed by a close pass on a road with a cycle lane, or looked at a strip of white paint on a dual carriageway and wondered what it’s actually for, this one’s for you.
00:00 Intro
00:39 The Argument, & Why This Affects You Even If You Don’t Cycle
01:34 A Conspiracy, Or Just laziness?
03:09 The Standard We Set & Didn’t Hit
04:03 The Door Zone
04:53 The Man With The Sensors
05:42 The Lane I Mentioned
06:31 “Progress”
07:25 The System Underneath
08:14 Bigger Than Cycling
Business enquiries: averagemanonabike@gmail.com
37 Comments
Yes, i don't understand why drivers resist cycle lanes because if you get more people onto bikes, it reduces car traffic so drivers benefit too. There's probably an element of oil industry lobbying but i suspect it's mainly down to ignorance. Car culture is so normalised that most people can't envisage a better way.
I looked at the guidance when the local council was getting feedback on their plans for a new section of cycling infrastructure. It seemed to say "this is good infrastructure and what we recommend – but if there isn't much space, do whatever you want". What was planned was some quite nice bits of separated cycle path with essentially nothing at the dangerous pinch points, including one section of extremely twisty 0.8m wide path, shared with pedestrians and with a high hedge that makes it impossible to see what is coming. Even that hasn't happened yet.
I noticed that you negotiated a lot of cycle lanes with dotted white lines – the most dangerous form of infrastructure possible!
Theres one of those shared pavements near me, and something I recently noticed is that the drop-down onto road level significantly reduces braking force at the exact moment of decision. Almost caught me out several times.
I'm confused about the thumbnail and title. You say they "built that", but the thumbnail only shows paint? Where is the infrastructure title claims they built?
There is a huge mismatch, I think you forgot to either update the title with the thumbnail, or forgot to update the thumbnail with the title?
there are several roads near me where the painted "bite lane" just disappears every couple hundred meters to make space for a protected crossing island. Its crazy, the bike lane just ends, and the central island narrows the road to the point a car and bike physically cannot fit side by side, and then the bike lane reappears right after. When you are cycling you have to merge into the car traffic and find a spot between two cars for the few meters and then go back to your painted gutter. One of these roads has a junior school half way along it. Pedestrian crossings are important. But soo are bike lanes. Specially for children being able to cycle to school. But when a bike lane is judged by how many meters of white paint are used, it doesn't matter if that white paint has regular gaps in it
Love your channel mate. Keep it up!
Your Handlebars also looks small, a "Dutch Bike" would be wider…
The cycle lane paint represents a cheap way to spend govt funding while ploughing the rest into adult care. It's a nice little earner for councils.
It is a truth, bikes and cars cannot coexist safely.
The simplest test of whether you have genuine cycling infrastructure is to see whether it facilitates (Or even allows) cyclists to make right turns (Or left turns in countries that keep to the right of the road) at junctions while using the cycle lane. Paint is not infrastructure. There are some where the bike lane is just a succession of yield signs for every single entrance and junction the lane crosses, while the road in the same direction has right of way.
Very interesting video. The state of cycling infrastructure in the UK is a disaster. Has anyone tried using the cycle paths to get across Runcorn? You are guaranteed to get lost even if you avoid being flattened.
💯💯💯
Don't forget that a painted cycle lane makes the road visually wider, encouraging cars to go faster. It would be safer to move the kerb out to the white line and put bikes and cars in the same, narrower lane. Cars would go slower, and be forced to only pass when there is enough space to do so.
I don't know why, legally, painted bike gutters aren't considered an illegal redesignation of a single lane into a dual carriageway…
I am so glad that this is slowly changing where I live in Trafford/Manchester – Trafford Council have finally realised that this kind of provision does not work, and the new stuff being planned is almost as good as you'd find in more civilised countries in Europe (although still laughable to the Dutch, obviously). There has also been a realisation that the neighbouring councils need to coordinate infrastructure with one another – we previously had the absurd situation where Salford and Trafford built it up to the Manchester border and it just ended, right where it is needed the most on the edge of the city centre – but this is gradually being rectified.
I fear for the future though – many Reform councils are banning investment in new cycling infrastructure, if Andy Burnham becomes an MP the next GM mayor will probably be from Reform, and a Reform government will cut the meagre funding currently in place for more forward-thinking councils…I am glad that my local area is doing as much as it can while the money is still there, as I think the 2030s will see it grinding to a halt.
Goodheart's law inaction
Paint won't protect cyclists.
And then when motorists see cyclists avoiding such useless bike lanes: they conclude that all bike infrastructure is a useless waste of money.
Until road design engineers are liable for injuries nothing changes.
5:39 I had this problem when I tried touring in the US. Drivers expected me to ride on the shoulder side of the white line, but often it was covered in lose gravel and blackberry bramble covered in spikes. Drivers gave me more space when there was no shoulder.
Great video, that explains perfectly why I felt so unsafe on english roads when I cycled there
Sometimes I feel like councils deliberately make bad cycling infrastructure, wait for it not to get used, then use that as a justification for not "wasting" money on good bike lanes.
A painted white line is not cycling infrastructure… especially when it is used as car parking.
Need more cyclists so non-cyclist can see the cycling infrastructure as not waste but you need better cycling infrastructure to see more cyclists.
OMG! I've never seen a cycle lane so narrow! That's insane. Plus, my Mountain Bike's handlebars are even wider!
I wish you were your government advisor, and it's nice to listen with so much agreement to what you say. Thanks again. Cheers
Talking about car doors. I ride a recumbent bike. If someone opens a car door on me, because I won't go over the handle bars means that the boom will take the impact and I'll rip the door off is hinges.!
To be fair, I mostly cycle and when I see the bike signs on dual carriageways I think "Good Lord". I cycled on a busy dual carriageway exactly once through the New Forest. I got less than a mile before simply hopping over the crash barrier and trespassing through the wilderness to somewhere else.
There is probably one advantage to these bike "lanes" which is that they generally cause cars to leave enough space when stopped (at traffic lights etc.) for a bike to get past. They will still 100% be in the lane, just not enough to block your way as a cyclist. In almost every other way, I agree that they are more dangerous. And you didn't even mention the anger from drivers at cyclist "not staying in their (impossible to navigate) lane", or that all the oil and grime from cars washes into the bike lanes, to be collected by slippery metal grates the full width of the lane. I have honestly seen grates that are installed in the wrong direction, making riding over them equivalent to a trip to the hospital. 🤦
Check out the cycle lanes next to the Wandsworth roundabout! About 1m wide, 10m long, split into two directions and with lamp-posts stuck in the middle! Clearly put there as a joke, as nobody would ever try to cycle them.
You do realize that most cycle lanes are for traffic calming purposes , to keep auto drivers from hurting themselves.
Apparently I may have made a mistake. Thought Britain was still using Pounds, not Dollars, noticed that within 10 seconds of watching the cost sheet, at the commence if this video. $ ?
Even my city in the US deprecates painted bike lanes in favor of separated shared paths.
A lot of 'cycle lanes' are actually car door lanes.
All I need is 1 meter and a white line.
Vehicular cyclists have been saying this stuff for over five decades now, and yet the advocates of "cycling infrastructure" keep accepting the same old flawed infrastructure and demonizing those of us who point out its dangers. How many more lives is it going to cost before cycling advocates decide to get serious about cycling safety?
My advice: never use cycling infrastructure that isn't safe, and the vast majority of it isn't safe. In my experience, you're safer in the middle of a standard 13ft wide general traffic lane than you are on any bike lane or bike path.