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news
Cargo bike outside Waitrose in Headington, Oxford (Innkeeper55, Twitter)“It’s like a HGV parking in a car space”: Row erupts over cargo bike “blocking” pedestrian entrance to Waitrose
A cargo bike user has been branded “selfish” after a Waitrose customer claimed that, while exiting the shop, he almost tripped over the bike’s front wheel, which he said was “blocking” the entrance and adjacent pedestrian walkway.
The customer’s account has been subsequently ridiculed by cyclists on social media, who pointed out that the cargo bike was stationed at a cycle rack, positioned “well back” from the shop’s entrance, and that there was ample space to access the building using the pavement.
However, the customer responded to the criticism by arguing that the bike’s position on the pavement – away from allocated cargo bike spacing nearby – was the equivalent of “a HGV parking in an allocated car space”.
Cargo bike locked & blocking the pedestrian walkway into Waitrose, Headington @BadlyParkedOx @HeadingtonNews
Not worried about the elderly, disabled or less mobile, they’ve blocked the entrance instead of using the cargo bike parking spaces provided on the London Rd. Nice 👍🏻 pic.twitter.com/9LSgcyhETA— Innkeeper55 (@Innkeeper55) December 8, 2023
The cargo bike was photographed on Friday by X (formerly Twitter) user Innkeeper55 outside the Waitrose on Old High Street in the Oxford suburb of Headington.
“Cargo bike locked and blocking the pedestrian walkway into Waitrose,” the Twitter user wrote. “Not worried about the elderly, disabled, or less mobile, they’ve blocked the entrance instead of using the cargo bike parking spaces provided on the London Road. Nice.”
The post, which has been viewed over 85,000 times, has divided opinion on the social media platform, as cyclists posted their own photos of the bike parking situation outside Waitrose to argue that the initial photograph was “dishonest” and that there is “plenty of room” for customers to access the shop:
Don’t really see what the problem is - plenty of room to access Waitrose from pavement pic.twitter.com/SIzChZBIYq
— nick gibb (@nickpgibb) December 8, 2023
“You could say the same about cars parked on pavements – yes, you could walk around but you shouldn’t have to,” Innkeeper55 responded.
“I came out of the shop and turned immediately left as I do daily and nearly tripped over the bloody front wheel. Any one less abled would not have been able to pass.”
“I do see your point,” the In Oxford account replied, “A couple of things though: Waitrose have said in the past that section isn’t intended as a ‘path’. The much wider pathway is, to the left of your pic, which you’ve deliberately cut out. Also, the cargo bike owner may not know dedicated parking spots exist for them.”
The customer replied: “It’s a heavily used walkway whatever Waitrose may have said. I’m not looking for an argument with anyone, but this is very selfish parking of a cargo bike which restricts pedestrians who use the walkway. Locals know there’s much more considerate places to park these bikes.”
Rory McCarron, a senior solicitor at Leigh Day who specialises in cycling-related issues, also noted that the cargo bike was “parked at the specific bike parking”.
He continued: “There’s a Boardman bike parked beyond it. Considering the layout here, the cargo bike is well set back from the entrance and not even the nearest rack to the entrance. Absolutely pathetic.”
“No it’s not,” Inkeeper55 said. “It’s like a HGV parking in an allocated car space.”
> Council slaps nuisance notice on family cargo bike parked on pavement
Of course, this isn’t the first time that the placement of a cargo bike has been the subject of controversy.
In September 2022, Hackney Council came in for criticism after an enforcement notice was placed on a family-owned cargo bike which was parked on a pavement, demanding its removal within seven days.
The bike belonged to Will Prochaska, who used it to transport his three children, one aged four and two two-year-old twins, to nursery and at the weekend. As the family did not have access to adequate private storage space, the bike was parked outside on the pavement, where it was issued with a seven-day notice from the local authority.
After Will posted on Twitter about the unexpected notice, the council responded by tweeting that the bike “is causing an obstruction on the pavement so it would need to be removed and parked somewhere safe. This can be on your own private property or somewhere designated for bicycles” – a rather blunt reply which caused something of a backlash on the social media platform.
“I think the case shows the desperate need for cargo bike parking solutions in Hackney,” Will told road.cc. “As it is, the way we park our bike never blocks the pavement, so the argument that it’s an obstruction is false.”
And in July, Bristol couple Anna and Mark Cordle made the headlines after they set up a parking space for their family cargo bike outside their home which, a year after it was installed, became the subject of threats by the council to remove it – because, the local authority said, it was taking up a car parking space.
When asking Anna and Mark – who made the switch to a cargo bike after giving up their car – to remove the heavy planters used to secure the bike, Bristol City Council claimed that placing them on the road is in breach of Section 149 of the Highways Act, and that they would be liable “if any person has an accident as a result of [your] planters being on the highway”.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
Latest Comments
- anotherflat 38 min 5 sec ago
Years ago, driving down a country lane in the pitch dark, the only thing that alerted me to the cyclist in front was their pedal reflectors (dark...
- AidanR 45 min 53 sec ago
You might be safer using one of these: https://yplac.co.uk/product/yplac-mini-stickers/
- I love my bike 55 min 50 sec ago
I live in an English city, where multiple times in the year, one side of the market square & high street (that are explicitly open to cycle...
- chrisonabike 56 min ago
Wait a minute - coaster brakes not suited for descents? Someone better time-travel back and tell the embryonic MTB community......
- chrisonabike 59 min 8 sec ago
Argh! Now there's some kind of rat problem there too! Definitely no windows!
- quiff 3 hours 10 min ago
Fair point - I was restricting myself to pedal bikes. As I've never spent that kind of money on anything though (mortgage doesn't count), it's kind...
- brooksby 4 hours 12 min ago
And finally: I wonder how many of the "more than 3,000" signatures on that petition are actually locals, who live or work there (and are not just...
- Doug_D 5 hours 48 min ago
Another book suggestion - I can highly recommend "Lost Summers and Half-Forgotten Afternoons: A Mint Sauce collection" - a beautifully presented...
- mdavidford 7 hours 39 min ago
I think you're missing an opportunity to pack even more tech into it - add accelerometers that can detect whether they're pedalling or stepping....
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100 comments
If I were allowed one, it would be a golden retriever or maybe even a weimaraner.
(What will rendel make of that and me being a Waitrose weekly shopper ?)
I think either of those would be good cause to stop and give some attention to. Small yappy dogs outside of shops are best ignored as they can get frightened of big tall humans.
One with small horns, udders and a collar clearly labelled "dog"?
Sounds like it's in cow-moo-flage
The customer replied: “. . . . . I’m not looking for an argument with anyone, but this is very selfish parking of a cargo bike which restricts pedestrians who use the walkway. Locals know there’s much more considerate places to park these bikes.”
Argued the customer . . . . .
Christ, people really will moan about any old shit on Twitter, won't they?
Snobishness
Whataboutery
Just walk around, its not far
Bigger things to worry about
Come on folks, we just need someone to say 'they were probably only there for a few minutes' to complete the full hypocratic defence of cyclists doing the things you all complain about when drivers do it.
True - but if the pictures/tweets are to be believed, the bike is parked exactly where it's supposed to be and the only problem is that Inkeeper55 wants to walk through the bike parking area, but can't because... there's a bike exactly where it's supposed to be. I think this is more a case of "can't miss a chance to shit on cyclists" rather than cyclist hypocrisy.
I can see that, you can see that, but just look at the responses this sort of stuff gets. The hate just comes out first, they cant help themselves.
I've looked through all the comments on here, no hate. Must be talking about Twitter I thought, looked there, no hate. Where are you seeing hate?
Looking at the wider angle photo, I do wonder whether the reason they have got used to often creeping along between the shop windows and the bike parking is because there are often cars parked up onto that wider section of footway "just for five minutes while I get the paper and a pint of milk"...?
Whataboutery - well, it's the same category (inconvenience - could be caused by anything in the way, car or bike). I thought classic whataboutery was criticising the speck in someone else's eye when you had a plank in your own though? That seems to better fit one side in these arguments - in this case because motor vehicles are a lot bigger and there are currently a LOT more of them.
Maybe the best thing to avoid a tiff is to compare this image with the gold standard (NL currently). Is it convenient here for people walking, wheeling or cycling to this shop? Yes, there's ample footway here and (official) cycle parking right outside.
Now all they need do is fix those roads so people aren't troubled by fast motor vehicles. Or indeed finding them on the pavement - which can *actually* be a showstopper for those with mobility issues (because kerbs and having to get in the road). As as opposed to a momentary inconvenience for someone accustomed to taking a shortcut and not paying much attention to their surroundings.
(And yes - we need to take this human characteristic into account in designs, but not to the extent of "no change"...)
Actually - the correct response to this is simply to repeat what the the guy in Twitter said - plenty of room to access Waitrose from the pavement?
Done.
So if a car parks on a wide sidewalk that's okay, as long as there is still room to walk around it?
This isn't the USA
If a car parks on a footway or a bike obstructs a footway, that is an issue. Here there argument is about the shop frontage and which parts are allocated to bikes, pedestrians or even cars. Possible to have parking on a shop frontage
https://maps.app.goo.gl/BZnGoRbffQmXDN5L6
I actually live in this 'gold standard', and I can tell you bikes in general, and cargo bikes very often, are parked very much in the way of pedestrians all the time.
Part of it is just people not really caring enough to do better, but an even bigger part is that - yes, even here - car parking is prioritised and in many places there just isn't enough space left to put your bike somewhere where it is not in the way of others, especially in inner city streets with houing (instead of shops). In my street there are no front gardens and the sidewalks are only about 70cm wide, but all along it are car parking spots. People living here, like the sudents in the home next to us, have no other place to leave their bikes on the sidewalk.
Pedestrians complain about that, and rightly so, but the cause is that there just is no available, suiting place for these bikes.
The solution is simple though. Just turn a few of these car parking spots into cycling parking spots, and let cargo bike take a car parking spot (they are being used as car alternatives anyway).
I understand your query now. In NL you have "nice to have" problems of "what to do with all these bikes". People are people, more or less careful or selfish.
Unfortunately in the UK we have very few people using bikes for transport so we have exactly the same problems but with cars instead - which means *much* more space taken up. Problems then go from "I have to walk round the bike" to "pedestrians have to jump into the road" (where lots of cars may be passing at over 48kmh - it's the UK) or "there is a kerb so this is literally inaccessible if you have kids in a buggy / have disabilities".
It's more a difference in quality than degree.
This particular story is just one guy having a moan though because there was something that meant walking maybe 6 extra steps. (Probably there's some personal story behind why this got his goat this time. )
To reiterate - I agree that where there is mass cycling people will park bikes inconsiderately (just like they do with cars) - and this is something that as you say is a challenge. But this is a very different thing from how cars full space and get in the way - in the same way as eg. thousands of buildings are not damaged every year by bikes smashing through their walls and windows.
I completely agree with your last point. If we could only learn from some of the mistakes that NL has made (or avoid some of the "growing pains") it would save us years and hundreds of millions of pounds. Unfortunately it seems that mass cycling is something that "evolves" rather than a collection of engineering solutions we can import. I wish it were like that but it seems this is the way the world works...
They were not blocking the footway so not really sure where you are going with this.
Next door has a fence and seating along the same line.
The bollards are there to stop drivers crashing through the shop, not a demarcation of the bike parking space.
The bollards, and the fact that other businesses along there have frontages, might also suggest that this is not public land and therefore up to Waitrose to decide if the cargo bike is allowed to park there.
.
There are regular posts on twitter where people (often owners) park infront of their shops, on the businesses land, and responses make out like its the end of the world.
The cargo bike is obviously longer and has parked into/over a space that would never be blocked by a normal bike. The problem here is the cargo bike is longer and their isnt a dedicated spot here for it, so the owner has parked 'only blocking a bit more space' like many drivers do, rather than find a space for it.
Should wiatrose offer cargo bike parking, probably. Is that space suitable, probably. Is it currently a cargo bike space or a space that is predominately used for walking by customers, its used by people walking.
Honestly i dont get why cycle campaigners are so against just being honest with a situation. Yes its much less worse than a car parking there, but its still not appropraite. You cant constantly dismiss issues with cycling just because 'its not as bad as it could be'.
Im sure if that space was blocked by some shop stock on promotion, there would be just as many people arguing the store had just removed a safe pedestrian space and force peds nearer to the road where a car might mount the pavement and hit them.
It's not a footway and you have decided it should be a walkway, despite the railings in front of the shop where you could leave a dog or lock a bike.
Yup - in this case parking in a designated area, literally blocking no-one, not restricting or endangering anyone by forcing them off the footway. Just one guy who simply tried to walk through a bike and is now angry because cyclists it seems.
Not sure why this has prompted "bloody cyclists, they think they're always right!" but then I'm not in Twitter (as was).
Pllenty of room to access Waitrose from the pavement?
Those are things cyclists say when cars are parked illegally, not when they're parked in actual parking spaces.
God forbid the poor patrons of Waitrose suffer a fall...
Bigwheeler88, have you admitted to using Rendel's image as your avatar yet? (As highlighted in this thread: https://road.cc/content/news/police-scold-cyclist-with-cat-not-wearing-h...)
If not, I can't take any of your posts at face value and advise that others don't either. I am especially dubious of the forum post you created regarding "Informal verbal warning from the police after submitting near miss" (https://road.cc/content/forum/informal-verbal-warning-police-after-submi...)
You can't take his *face* at face value, you mean? (Or rather its connection to that user name - although of course it could be a genuine likeness but what's bogus is it's actually Rendel pretending to be bigwheeler88; or perhaps *everyone* is Nigel and there is no spoon?)
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'I can't take any of your posts at face value and advise that others don't either'
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You speak for yourself, mate!
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I believe Cycle Happy were speaking for themselves, but I agree with them.
🟢
C'mon Flintshire
🔴
It's nearly Christmas
🟡
What about putting up some seasonally appropriate decorations?
❄️
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