Council bosses are facing criticism for ‘squandering’ more than £10,000 of taxpayers’ cash on a cycle lane with numerous hazards.

The Worcester bicycle route has been slammed by cyclists forced to zig-zag around the obstacles and branded an ‘embarrassment’ and a ‘mess’.

Riders must dodge a lamppost, tree, bins and a speed camera placed in the centre of the cycle lane, next to a busy main road.

Now it has emerged Worcestershire City Council paid £9,195 for the cycle lane – which runs along New Road from the city centre to St John’s, alongside Worcester Cricket Club – with £5,000 spent on painting white lines and installing bollards.

And a further £3,000 was used to close part of New Road for three days while the cycle lane was installed in June this year.

Dan Brothwell, chairman of cycling campaign group, Bike Worcester, described the lane as an ‘embarrassment’.

‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,’ he said.

‘The coup de grâce is the effort spent painting a solid white line around the speed camera.

‘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.

‘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.’

And one cyclist, Jon Marshall, said he almost crashed twice while riding on the cycle lane.

The 23-year-old said: ‘I cannot actually believe that the council have squandered ten 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.’

Another cyclist, Janine Fowles, 58, also told of her surprise at the number of objects blocking the route.

The council acknowledged it had received a number of complaints about the New Road cycle lane but maintained it has been a success.  

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.

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‘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.”

The under-fire council launched the scheme after receiving the worst possible zero rating from Active Travel England – the new government body in charge of handling cash for walking and cycling initiatives.

Elsewhere, a pensioner suffered a broken wrist and two black eyes after tripping over a ‘hazardous’ cycle lane marker, designed to protect cyclists by creating a buffer between them and motorists, in Middlesbrough.

And Brummies were left baffled by what has been branded the ‘world’s shortest cycle lane’ – measuring just 8ft.

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