Read Source A. What do you learn about the Meadow Street cycle lane from the article?

This question tests reading for information (R1) on one short source, for 5 marks. The mark scheme divides at inference: retrieving what the article says reaches 3, saying what those facts amount to reaches 5.

The retrievable detail [1 to 3]

• The lane opened in April.
• Counters buried in the tarmac recorded eleven thousand bicycles a week, four times the number using the old painted strip.
• The traffic moved to the next street for about seven months, then thinned again.

Reaching 4 to 5 marks

1. The lane succeeded against the objections made about it. Four evenings of public meetings were filled with warnings that customers would vanish, and instead spending across forty businesses rose by nine per cent. The article explains why, which is the part worth quoting: people arriving by bicycle came more often and stayed longer, even though each visit was smaller. [1]
2. The design changed who felt able to ride. The old painted strip was used almost entirely by men between twenty and forty; the new lane, separated by a low kerb, carries children, delivery riders and people over sixty. The kerb is the variable, so the barrier was never willingness. [1]

Where marks are lost

Copying the numbers without saying what they show. Note also that the objections are evidence here, not background: the article is structured as a list of predictions followed by what actually happened, and answering it means using both halves.

Examination takeaway

On a five-mark source question, look for the sentence that explains a statistic rather than states it. That sentence is almost always where the top-band mark is.