Council spends £10k on 'embarrassing' cycle lane blocked by a speed camera, bins and lampposts

A council has been accused of "wasting" more than £10,000 of taxpayers' money on a cycle lane that is filled with obstacles.

The 150 metre-long bike route in Worcester has been criticised by cyclists who have to navigate around a speed camera, bins, a tree and lampposts.

It has now emerged that Worcestershire County Council spent £9,195 on the lane, including £5,000 painting white lines and installing bollards.

A further £3,000 was spent closing part of New Road for three days while the cycle lane was installed in June.

Dan Brothwell, chairman of Bike Worcester chairman, said: "It's an embarrassment, I don't know whether to laugh or cry."

"The coup de grace is the effort spent painting a solid white line around the speed camera," he added.

"If the aim is to put Worcester on the map for comic reasons, the council are going about it the right way.

"Rather than providing infrastructure that offers an improvement to people walking and cycling we are presented with this mess.

"This does nothing to improve connectivity or continuity of the already shared use path on New Road.

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"The time, effort and money spent on this is a total waste, and could have had far more positive effect spent elsewhere in the city."

Cyclist Jon Marshall, 23, said he had almost crashed twice while using the cycle lane.

He said: "I cannot actually believe that the council have squandered 10 grand on something which is worse than the road.

"I came within a whisker of falling into the road when I had to swerve around a bin only to see a tree in front of me.

"Another time I had to swerve around the speed camera but almost hit another cyclist coming the other way."

Janine Fowles, 58, from Worcester, said: "I got on my bike for the first time when it was installed but I was a bit surprised at the number of objects blocking the route."

However, the council insist the lane has been a success, saying it has resulted in "very little conflict" between cyclists and pedestrians.

Councillor Mike Rouse, cabinet member for highways and transport, said: "Cycling infrastructure of any kind, which needs to follow strict government guidelines, is expensive and this is one of the reasons we can't install as much as we would like as a council.

"With the New Road, we had a number of complaints about the conflict between pedestrians and cyclists on the combined New Road footway and cycleway.

"Since the scheme was installed, monitoring has revealed that the scheme has been successful and that there is now very little conflict as most pedestrians and cyclists are using the segregated lanes which is really good news for both."