Every lane on Holloway carries a "Legal Status Search" link on its detail card, right below the main navigate button. It looks like a small thing, a link that opens a Google search, but it exists because of a real gap this app can't close any other way: there is no single, national, up-to-date database of which byways currently carry a Traffic Regulation Order. Councils publish notices in different places, in different formats, on different schedules, and nobody, Holloway included, has a live feed into all of them.
It's a search, not a database
This is worth saying plainly because it changes how you should treat the answer. Tapping "Legal Status Search" doesn't query anything Holloway owns, it opens a real Google search in a new tab, pre-filled with a specific question about that specific lane. Google's own AI Overview usually attempts a direct answer, and it's often a good one, but it's Google answering from whatever's indexed and current at that moment, not Holloway confirming anything from its own records. The line directly under the link says as much: "This searches Google, results aren't guaranteed or complete."
Why the search is phrased as a real question
The query isn't a bag of keywords, it's an actual sentence: something like "Is there a current traffic regulation order on Forty Foot Lane (BOAT) in Bedfordshire? Give a definitive answer if possible, and list the specific places I could check this myself." That phrasing came from testing, not a guess. A keyword-only search ("Bedfordshire council traffic regulation order Forty Foot Lane") tends to surface generic council pages about what a TRO is in general. Asking a real question, and asking explicitly for both a direct answer and named sources, gets a noticeably better result, an AI Overview that states a clear yes or no where one exists, cites the specific council page or notice, and is honest when the situation is genuinely ambiguous rather than forcing a false certainty.
Two real examples from testing this: a search for Bedfordshire's Forty Foot Lane returned a direct answer naming active temporary restrictions with exact date ranges and a link straight to the council's own closures page. A search for a Leicestershire byway that crosses into Lincolnshire correctly flagged the cross-border complication and named both councils' own portals rather than picking one and guessing.
What to actually do with the answer
Treat it as a strong starting point, not a final word. If the search comes back with a clear, sourced answer, that's usually enough to act on, but it's still worth clicking through to the actual council page it names rather than trusting the summary alone. If it comes back vague, or with no useful result at all, that's not Holloway or Google failing you, it usually means the information genuinely isn't well indexed anywhere, which is exactly the situation our own TRO explainer describes: notices get published in inconsistent places with no central register. In that case, checking signage on the day and, if you have time before a ride, a direct email to the council's rights of way team is the more reliable path.
Worth knowing too, MOD and Scenic road lanes never carry a Traffic Regulation Order at all (a firing-range restriction or ordinary road conditions apply instead), so the search wording adjusts for those rather than asking a question that can't have a TRO answer. And if the underlying legal status itself is what you're unsure about, rather than a specific closure, our Section 53 piece covers how a route's actual designation gets settled in the first place.
This is reference information, and the search results themselves can be incomplete or out of date. Holloway's own recorded closure status, where we have one, still appears directly on the lane's detail card, the search is there for everything we don't have a record of, which is most lanes, most of the time. Always check current signage and any Traffic Regulation Order in place before you ride.
Holloway's free to browse, every legal green lane in England and Wales with its classification, difficulty, hazards and its own Legal Status Search link, no account needed. Holloway Premium adds route planning, GPX export and live navigation for £20 a year.