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news
Marble Arch cycle lane (copyright Simon MacMichael)Cycling in London up a quarter since 2019 as TfL aims to get more people in the saddle
The number of people cycling in London is up a quarter since 2019, with Transport for London (TfL) aiming to get even more people in the saddle, especially women and members of ethnic minorities.
The London Evening Standard reports that TfL cycle counts for Inner London from March this year to the beginning of June showed 24 per cent growth on average against the comparable period three years earlier.
The intervening period of course has seen a huge change in travel patterns as a result of COVID-19 which has seen many people, including key workers in hospitals for example, swich to two wheels to get to work while others who previously commuted to offices by bike, say, are now working from home at least some of the time.
Weekday cycling has risen by 14 per cent over the past three years, but growth has been particularly strong at the weekends – when more people are likely to be riding for leisure purposes – rising by 82 per cent.
TfL cycling strategy manager Alexandra Goodship said: “We have seen really strong growth in cycling over the last 20 years, with journeys having increased by 152 per cent.
“Cycling was really popular during the pandemic but it’s a bit early yet to know whether that trend is going to continue beyond this period.”
While the general trend over the past decade has been for the number of cyclists killed or seriously injured (KSI) on the capital’s roads to fall, there was a 15 per cent increase last year.
According to TfL, in excess of 800,000 trips are now carried out by bike each day, but it says that in order to hit its goal of 1.3 million journeys a year by 2024, it will focus on trying to encourage more women and members of ethnic minority groups to cycle.
“We want to shift our approach to be much more inclusive and to broaden its appeal,” Ms Goodship explained.
“We are going to be refreshing the cycling action plan later this year. It’s really critical that everything we deliver in cycling reaches all Londoners, particularly in deprived areas.
“If we can succeed in making cycling more inclusive, we will be able to unlock many of the ‘switchable trips’. We know that 38 per cent of switchable trips are made by black and ethnic minority Londoners and more than half by women.”
This month has seen the opening of a protected cycleway on the north side of the Hammersmith Gyratory as well as the completion of Cycleway 9 running west from there to Chiswick, and Cycleway 4 in Greenwich is also currently under construction.
But with the coronavirus pandemic causing a cash crisis at TfL due to plummeting fare revenue, it is now having to rely on short-term government bailouts and has said that only projects where cash has already been committed will be built for now – and as a result it is calling on boroughs to themselves fund initiatives including bike hangers and cycle parking at train stations to help boost cycling.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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22 comments
There certainly a lot more cyclists on the road in London these days. Having commuted by bike in London for over 30 years on and off, it's a lot more common than it used to be.
Given that London's population is apparently ~35-40% BME and over half female, I'm not sure that that's indicating the kind of discrepancy that seems to be being implied.
Good spot!
Quite. It is also meaningless in terms of inclusivity without also looking at the overall figures for cycling, what if 38% of switchable trips were made by BME Londoners but that they were also accountable for 75% of cycle trips, in which case inclusivity wouldn't be a problem (obviously this is not the case but...).
You see that sort of oversight quite frequently.
The stop and search figures are the most glaring example I can think of.
Stop and searches in London occur to 38 people per thousand across the races per year, but only 20 per thousand for white people and 59 per thousand for black people. Thus by head of population, with no mixing up of percentages, black people are three times more likely to be stopped and searched in London than white people.
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/crime-justice-and-the...
Are those figures adjusted for age, location (eg London borough level) and time of day?
I don't think they are, which neatly demonstrates my point.
You mean have those figures been manipulated until you can use them to try and prove your point? No, they represent government data showing, as I said, that a black person is three times more likely to be stopped and searched in London than a white person. Perhaps we could ask them if they have height and weight figures for each person along with whether or not they are left or right-handed, there must be some way, somehow, you could show that racial bias in stop and search doesn't exist.
I'll add statistics to the (long) list of things you clearly don't understand.
In order to reach a sound conclusion you need to know that the two populations you are studying are sufficiently similar.
If you only choose one variable and ignore all the others you can find yourself comparing very dissimilar populations and easily reach the wrong conclusion.
Stop and search statistics are a very obvious example of this but are nevertheless defended vociferously.
Thank you for demonstrating my point so perfectly.
Like, I don't know, living in the same city under the same police force but one group of people getting stopped three times more often than another? That's it for me, I usually wouldn't bother answering you at all these days but I wasn't willing to let your little bit of totally irrelevant casual racism go by without comment. I know from long and very boring experience that you believe that you are an expert in everything and won't accept any figures that prove you wrong, no matter how good their provenance. Have a nice day now.
That's the problem with you Rendel.
You're not interested in getting the correct answer to the question. You want the answer that fits with your predetermined worldview. You then happily trot out the 'racist' card against someone who has merely questioned the statistical validity of a set of figures.
I'll leave you with a few things to mull over.
If the population of London demographically uniform across all age ranges?
If you look at all Londoners aged over 80 and all Londoners aged under 30 are they comparable in terms of race?
If not then could this skew the figures?
If under 30s are more likely to get stopped and searched than over 80s and under 30s are also more likely to be black what effect would this have on the overall statistics?
Likewise if we looked at high crime and low crime areas of London are they demographically identical?
If poorer people tend to live in higher crime areas then white people in London (who are statistically much wealthier) would be less likely to live in a high crime area than black people.
Would we expect stop and search rates to be identical in high and low crime areas?
If not then what effect would that have on the overall statistics?
These are basic questions which anyone with a shred of statistical knowledge would ask.
I understand why you didn't consider them.
*
†
I'm not sure that we're supposed to group people as BAME any more...? I'm not sure what is supposed to be used instead, mind.
Well that was TfL's grouping, rather than mine (albeit they wrote it out in full, rather than the acronym).
Where I am it's apparently changed from BAME to BIPOC, though I'm not sure that really improves things in terms of lumping a lot of diverse people together (especially when it's essentially defined in the background as 'not white').
We all ought to be thrilled reading such news, as where London goes, the rest of the country usually follows.
However, with cycling that seldom seems to be the point. Up here in Derby the council are removing cycle lanes to speed up traffic as a means of reducing pollution, go figure and generally making cycling far harder to conduct unless your cycling only includes leisure rides away from the city.
They have recently opened a bike storage facility in the city centre, that makes two now, but hardly anyone uses them, even in the middle of the summer as the infrastructure to get you there is absolutely woeful.
I hope so, seeing as the sum-total of cycling infra near me is a single, broken concrete path, slowly being reclaimed by the grass verges on both sides, that is so full of dog walkers (that technically shouldn't be there) that it's usually quicker to get off and walk down it.
If you build it, they will come.
Alas - that needs qualification. "If they already have cars, and you build it so cars can get through, they will come".
Or "if you build it well enough (feels safe - including "socially safe", is convenient, is part of a network that goes where people want to go, with safe cycle storage at destinations) AND it's more convenient than driving, and cycling isn't seen as the preserve of the outsiders - the poor, the nerdy, macho racers or something you give up after age 7
... then they will come".
In some places in London there's a promising uptake of cycling. I hope it spreads. Currently urban areas are the "best showroom" for mass cycling as they tend to be more compact and the downsides of mass driving (and parking) are obvious. Even then it still seems to need considerable political backbone to start change.
The rest of the country DREAMS of having cycling infrastructure of the quality of London. And as for something sensibly continental.....
FIFY
There are a few good spots across the UK (my bit of Edinburgh for example). Also not all London!
I was thinking about "what will actually get all those people who don't use cycling as a mode of transport (the vast majority) to start to use it for some of their trips"? Because it's a balance - most people will pick the most convenient transport mode - there's a positive side to this. Where owning a car or driving isn't particularly convenient (e.g. dense urban environments) the "attraction" of cycling doesn't need to be as great.