Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

Back to news
news

Trans Pennine Trail post pics to promote cycle network... and it didn't go so well; Silca's bonkers $175 Bourbon Titanium kit; Shropshire hires £1k a day pothole consultant; Motorcyclist shows flaws with broken line bike lane + more on the live blog

All today's news from the site and beyond.....
UPDATED Wed, Feb 05, 2020 17:26
26
04 February 2020, 21:05
Meanwhile, in Utrecht ...
04 February 2020, 21:04
Greater Manchester's Bee Network gets kudos from the Dutch Cycling Embassy
04 February 2020, 16:51
The Trans Pennine Trail post pics on Twitter to promote cycle network... and it didn't go so well

Unfortunately quite a few of the replies have noted the muddy signage and rather unkempt-looking surface, the latter of which doesn't exactly scream “ride me”.

In response to some of the criticisms, Trans Pennine Trail replied: “Thank you for your comments, this is something we're continually working on, lobbying for a better quality Trail. Many sections are being improved with funding and if you have any sections in particular you have issues with, please do get in contact with us we can report it!”

Do you think Trans Pennine have been given a hard time, or does a lot more need to be done to make sure these routes are useable for all, not just those who are happy to get real muddy? 

04 February 2020, 17:13
Police searching for man 'inappropriately touching women' as he rode around Northampton
police car - wikimedia commons

Northamptonshire Police are appealing for information after four women aged between 21 and 62 were touched inappropriately by a man who was cycling past them on a mountain bike. 

The incidents all happened between 8.30am and 9.30 am on January 29th. A Police spokesman said: "In all cases the offender was cycling past on a mountain bike and is described as a white man aged between 25 and 30 with dark hair.

"A 25-year-old woman was walking towards the University of Northampton, as was a 34-year-old woman. In addition a 21-year old woman was walking along New South Bridge Road while the a 62-year-old woman was walking towards the town centre along London Road.

"If there is anyone with information or who may have witnessed these incidents, please call us on 101 quoting reference number 20000054336."

04 February 2020, 16:43
Olympic mountain bike manager resigns

Paul Davis has stepped down from his role in delivering and managing mountain biking at Tokyo 2020. Davis also worked at London 2012 and Rio 2016, and has stepped down from his latest role “after much soul-searching.”

04 February 2020, 15:50
Silca's bonkers $175 Bourbon Titanium Kit, consisting of super fancy bottle cages and... straws?
Silca Ti Straws Bourbon WR

Silca already launched their $30 reusable titanium straws in December, made because Silca realised they could fashion straws from the offcuts of titanium left over from making their Sicuro titanium bottle cages. They've now took things a step further with the Bourbon Titanium Kit, consisting of two bottle cages and two straws “inspired by Chris King” and anodised in a rich, bourbon colour.

The bourbon in the picture isn't included for your $175 and we're still unsure if these products will be sold from a UK distributor any time soon... but for this money you might as well whack some import fees on top and buy them directly from Silca's US online shop. 

04 February 2020, 12:06
Phil Gaimon's dog has her own Strava account
strava phil gaimon dog screenshot

The ex-pro turned star of his own 'Worst Retirement Ever' YouTube series has made a Strava account for his faithful friend Nala. Her first upload was a 0.5km jaunt taken at a pace of just over 20 minutes per kilometre, with some discarded pizza crusts consumed to top up fuel along the way. 

04 February 2020, 15:06
Look stupendous in road.cc kit
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Ci prepariamo per la primavera? 17 gradi.

A post shared by Filippo (@filippograndicelli) on

Lookin' good Filippo! If you want to look this dashing on your next ride, head over to the road.cc shop to get your jerseys, socks, tees and more. 

04 February 2020, 13:07
Pinarello launch new Dogma F12 colours for Spring 2020
pinarello dogma f12 spring 2020 colours

Nine months after its launch last year, the Dogma F12 as ridden by Team Ineos is now available in Blue Steel (above), Sideral Grey and Venice Blue as part of their Spring 2020 collection. Each colourway is available in rim or disc brake versions and can be ordered as framesets or complete bikes.

It's always best not to be drinking tea or coffee when perusing a Pinarello price list, as there's a good chance you'll spit some out... this one is no different, with an F12 disc with Campagnolo Super Record EPS groupset and Bora wheels or SRAM Red e-Tap AXS with Zipp 303 wheels priced at £12,000. Deliveries can be expected at the end of March if you have the funds to splash out, see Pinarello's website for more info. 

04 February 2020, 12:48
Free Santander cycles for a year: TfL announces first 10 year anniversary competition winner
santander cycles 10 year comp winner

The competition aimed to reward those with particularly good stories about their experience of Santander Cycles, and the first prize has gone to Sakhr Al-Makhadhi. 

Mr Al-Makhadhi, based in Harrow, says on the day the scheme launched on Friday 30th July 2010, he got up at 5.30am in an attempt to be the first person to hire one of the bikes: “I knew the scheme was launching at 6am so I went to the Dorset Square docking station and tried my key at 5.55am. It worked! I took a bike out. Within seconds, a taxi driver hooted at me and congratulated me for being the first one.”

His prize is a free annual membership to Santander Cycles, and a hire bike named in his honour. There are 11 more prize winners to be named and the competition is still open; if you reckon you've completed the most Santander Cycle journeys, have a good story to tell or hired bikes in their inaugural year, you can email ​cyclehire10 [at] tfl.gov.uk for a chance to win. 

04 February 2020, 11:34
Shropshire has its own £1,000 a day pothole consultant
huge pothole - credit shaun wyllie on facebook.PNG

If you needed reminding of the state of Britain's pothole-laden roads, the BBC report that Shropshire Council have appointed a dedicated 'pothole consultant', charging £1,000 a day. 

The council say this is “comparable with usual consultancy costs”, and say they hope the appointment will improve their current “unproductive” strategy and speed up repair of the 3,500 reported road defects in the county. Steve Davenport of Shropshire Council claims even though the consultant will earn £130,000 working five days a week over the six month contract, they will actually save millions in the long run by “getting the right people on the ground doing a better job." Pothole repair in Shropshire is currently outsourced to construction and infrastructure company Keir, who the council say have been “allowed to mark their own homework” for too long. 

We're not sure if the consultant's role is more hands-on or strategic, but a grand a day to ride around looking for potholes doesn't sound like a bad living to us so long as we don't end up in one... 

04 February 2020, 11:14
Breaking: Ban on new petrol and diesel car sales brought forward to 2035
petrol filling up - via wikimedia commons

The BBC reports that the government have just announced that petrol, diesel and hybrid car sales will be banned by 2035 at the latest, not 2040 as previously stated. 

The change has come about because experts warned it would be too late for the UK to achieve its net zero carbon emissions target by 2050 if the ban didn't come into force until 2050. Speaking ahead of the launch of the COP26 climate change event in Glasgow, Boris Johnson said 2020 would be a "defining year of climate action". 

Some environmental campaigners believe it's still too little too late, with Green Party MP Caroline Lucas saying the ban needs to come in earlier, and it needs to be backed up by public transport investment. Extinction Rebellion have also set up outside the Glasgow Science Museum where Boris Johnson is delivering his plans, handing out flyers saying it's 'too little too late' and calling for the scrapping of HS2. 

04 February 2020, 10:32
Motorcyclist's footage perfectly demonstrates flaw with broken white lines acting as cycle lanes

The answer to our protagonist's question would probably be a resounding “no” for most parents, as he attempts to ride on a Dublin bike lane segregated only by some broken white lines. There is barely a moment in the 15 second clip where a car isn't either fully inside the 'lane' or seriously encroaching, the reason many cycle campaigners believe these advisory cycle lanes should be consigned to history (there's a decent article from the Cambridge Cycling Campaign explaining the difference between mandatory and advisory lanes here). 

Do you think there's ever a use case for a cycle lane with broken white lines? Let us know in the comments as always... 

04 February 2020, 10:28
New Rapha 'comic book' kit for Canyon//SRAM: full story below
04 February 2020, 09:17
Cyclist in a serious condition in hospital after being run over and beaten up near Wolverhampton

The Express and Star reports that a 24-year-old man is still in hospital after he was hit by a car in Darlaston at around 7pm on Sunday night. The occupants of the car are then believed to have got out and beat him up, leaving the man with serious injuries. He was treated by paramedics and taken to hospital, where he remains in a serious condition. 

The attackers fled the scene, and it's not known if the victim was targeted deliberately. A cordon was put up where the attack happened, with debris scattered across the road next to the victim's mangled bike. 

04 February 2020, 10:03
Is it miles or kilometres for you?

There were some strong opinions on the subject back in 1978...

There seems to be a slit in the road.cc office.

04 February 2020, 09:58
Aesthetic marginal gains for Cav

Being aero might save you some watts. But having classic bend bars saves more. Because science.

04 February 2020, 09:08
"When you have a Tour de France at 12:00 and a rave at 17:00": Balenciaga's new sneakers are not going down well

Bemused fashion fans are accusing Balenciaga of making these weird new trainers look like cycling shoes; although to be fair, we've never actually seen a pair of bike shoes this ugly. Back to the drawing board folks... 

04 February 2020, 09:00
Some might say... that's a strange comparison

But absolutely Ginevra, if cycling's most prominent (alleged) doping doctor is back in the news then why not music's most argumentative brothers? We're feeling all nostalgic...

Jack Sexty

Arriving at road.cc in 2017 via 220 Triathlon Magazine, Jack dipped his toe in most jobs on the site and over at eBikeTips before being named the new editor of road.cc in 2020, much to his surprise. His cycling life began during his students days, when he cobbled together a few hundred quid off the back of a hard winter selling hats (long story) and bought his first road bike - a Trek 1.1 that was quickly relegated to winter steed, before it was sadly pinched a few years later. Creatively replacing it with a Trek 1.2, Jack mostly rides this bike around local cycle paths nowadays, but when he wants to get the racer out and be competitive his preferred events are time trials, sportives, triathlons and pogo sticking - the latter being another long story.  

Add new comment

26 comments

Avatar
visionset | 4 years ago
0 likes

I for one do not want my countryside trails overly sanitised by pristine tarmac. It's one thing to expect a pothole free ride to work in the smoke, quite another to expect or want that off road through national parks.

Avatar
CygnusX1 | 4 years ago
0 likes

Kilometres on the bike,

Miles in the car,

Chains, links and rods for everything else  -- a measurement system that is both decimal (100 links to a chain) and imperial

 

Avatar
roubaixcobbles | 4 years ago
4 likes

Clearly for cyclists a blend of metric and imperial is the ideal - 100km with 3,000 feet of climb looks far better for Facebook boasting than 62 miles with 900m of climb.

Avatar
adamrice | 4 years ago
3 likes

There is a problem with protected bike lanes: they accumulate road debris more than unprotected ones, and street-sweepers can't clean them out. On my daily commute, there's a short stretch of bike lane protected by pylons (or whatever those waist-high plastic strips are called), and I avoid it entirely because there's so much debris in it. The irony is that there's so little motor traffic on that stretch I can't see why the city bothered.

Avatar
EddyBerckx replied to adamrice | 4 years ago
3 likes

On the protected section of cycle path I use (Cycle superhighway 3 next to the A13 dual carriageway) street sweepers can easily clean it but rarely do. They often use it for access but with their brushes up.

Meanwhile it's basically a light gravel track with the gravel removed and replaced by glass and flint flicked up from the dual carriageway next to it (and any glass from the routinely smashed cars is kindly swept into the middle of the lane and left there by the recovery vehicle people). So anyway, tyres have a 1500 mile life by the end of which they are cut to fuck and puncture every other wet ride.

But it's still way better than the alternative...which tells you something about the alternative...

Avatar
brooksby | 4 years ago
1 like

Anyone seen this one, yet?  (first NYC cyclist death of the year, apparently: 30th January so pretty late)

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/01/30/breaking-cyclist-is-killed-by-trucker-in-williamsburg-first-of-the-year/

 

Avatar
AlsoSomniloquism replied to brooksby | 4 years ago
1 like

It was linked to from the twitter replies on the other story about the "Close Pass" which should have been assault with a deadly weapon. I suggest no one watches the video though as it continues on from the Picture at the top which is bad enough. 

I think the worst part of the story though was that the driver performed an illegal U Turn manouvre, ie it is against the law just to do a u-turn. Killed a cyclist doing it, and  the NYPD decided not to charge him at the scene with anything as "no criminality was suspected". 

After this and Josh Quiqley being taken out at 70mph and no charges with that driver, I don't think I will be cycling in America anytime soon. 
 

Avatar
hawkinspeter replied to brooksby | 4 years ago
0 likes

That's horrific. Killed someone and smashed into a car, yet NYPD didn't charge him for anything criminal!

Avatar
CygnusX1 replied to hawkinspeter | 4 years ago
0 likes

Yeah should have been done for criminal damage to property

Avatar
eburtthebike | 4 years ago
3 likes

£1,000 a day for consulting on potholes?  Will they actually have any money left to fill them in?

Far better would be to have enrolled the support of local cyclists and pay them a bounty for each pothole they report; cheaper, more effective, much better optics.

Avatar
Simon E replied to eburtthebike | 4 years ago
3 likes

Kier have done a rubbish job and the council have done a piss-poor job of managing the contract after getting rid of staff and outsourcing the work.

I know only too well how rubbish the roads here are, riding on them every day. I wouldn't like to count the number of potholes I've had to report a second or third time after the cheap 5-minute bodge patching job falls apart, sometimes just weeks after the so-called repair.

Whether a consultant (definition: someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time) is needed... well that depends on what he/she can do that the council highways team - what's left of them - cannot.

Avatar
eburtthebike replied to Simon E | 4 years ago
5 likes

Simon E wrote:

Whether a consultant (definition: someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time) ....

and keeps your watch.

Avatar
srchar replied to Simon E | 4 years ago
0 likes

Consultant here. My current client (not public sector) don't have a watch, or even know what one is, but they have heard of them and hired me to build one from the pieces they have collected over the last few years, which include a slice of Billy Bear ham, a pair of fake joke hands and a tiara.

Trust me, the "pothole consultant" (civil engineering specialist) will be earning his grand a day!

Avatar
Bmblbzzz | 4 years ago
0 likes

I don't think that broken white line cycle lane tweet video is from a motorcycle. Might be a recumbent... 

Avatar
quiff replied to Bmblbzzz | 4 years ago
0 likes

Yeah, not a motorcycle (which would raise its own questions). Cargo bike I think. That person's Twitter feed also has a glorious video of someone failing to negotiate a car park ramp https://twitter.com/AlanDub13/status/1224239296984637440 

Avatar
Flâneur replied to Bmblbzzz | 4 years ago
0 likes

Twitter profile pic seems to suggest it's a Bullitt

Avatar
jacko645 | 4 years ago
1 like

You thought Boris was actually going to come up to Glasgow to launch the climate summit? Nah, that's the London Science Museum, Glasgow doesn't have one. We do have a transport museum which is arguably more appropriate though!
At least he's using less carbon emissions I suppose.

Avatar
KeithBird replied to jacko645 | 4 years ago
1 like

jacko645 wrote:

You thought Boris was actually going to come up to Glasgow to launch the climate summit? Nah, that's the London Science Museum, Glasgow doesn't have one. We do have a transport museum which is arguably more appropriate though! At least he's using less carbon emissions I suppose.

I doubt he will ever set foot in Glasgow again....

We do have a Science Centre though, which is again possibly more appropriate than a museum!

Avatar
Sniffer replied to KeithBird | 4 years ago
1 like

I doubt he will ever set foot in Glasgow again....

That thought has just brightened my day.

Avatar
eburtthebike | 4 years ago
6 likes

Never mind km or miles, I can't wait until we really leave so that we can go back to stones, pounds, ounces, threp'ny bits, sixpences, 240 pennies to the pound.  The kids today won't have a clue.

Avatar
Kendalred | 4 years ago
2 likes

That old Beeb footage from 1978 just goes to show how things have changed over the past 40 years or so...oh, hang on...err...

Highlights being the first woman who thought she would use more petrol because there are more kilometres per trip and the bloke at the end who spent 10 years in a war that lasted 6!

Avatar
efail replied to Kendalred | 4 years ago
5 likes

Inching towards metrication.

Avatar
eburtthebike replied to efail | 4 years ago
1 like

Metric inches or imperial?

Avatar
pasley69 replied to eburtthebike | 4 years ago
0 likes

Well now that BREXIt is done and dusted, why stick with this tacky French system?

I prefer cubits and stadia myself.

Adrian

Avatar
ktache replied to efail | 4 years ago
1 like

Born in 70s and everything at school was in metric.  Work in science, everything is metric.  The imperialistic system was a bit esoteric, and confusing as no base 10 with different bases at different times and with British imperialism being different to American Imperialism.

But there is some things that have come to make some sense, in that some subdivision can become easier and it is created on a human scale, I only discovered relatively recently but an inch is about the width of my thumb.  Stuff became a lot easier when I understood that.

Avatar
BIRMINGHAMisaDUMP replied to Kendalred | 4 years ago
2 likes

Yup, indeed. I once asked a brexthicker why he hated the EU so much and he replied cos of all the laws. Such as? I asked. Well there's hundreds of them, he replied. You don't have to tell me them all, I suggested. Just give me your top ten. Well there is loads of them, he helpfully replied.  Give me one? I asked. At which point his companion shouted (honestly) 'my dad didn't suffer in a Japanese prison of war camp so I have to listen to your crap'. And stormed off. 

Latest Comments