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news
CS5 cyclists (screenshot via London Cycles video Twitter)New report claims that tripling bike use would boost London’s economy by £5 billion a year
A new report by the academic research firm Transport for Quality of Life estimates that by trebling bicycle use in London to 14% of all journeys by 2030, London’s economy could be boosted to the tune of £5 billion pounds a year.
The report, written by Lisa Hopkinson and commissioned by the Bicycle Association, also claimed that increasing cycling in the capital would save lives, provide health benefits, create jobs, and result in cleaner air and less congested streets.
However, the Bicycle Association warned that any growth in cycle usage is reliant upon support from political leadership and Transport for London. As TfL’s support package from the Conservative government runs out this weekend, and with no long-term financial plan in place, both of these requirements now appear to be sorely lacking.
> Reaction as Transport for London pauses See their Side ad campaign following backlash
A report prepared for an upcoming meeting of the transport authority’s finance committee has warned that unless the government closes a £2 billion funding gap, TfL’s new cycling and walking improvement schemes – along with bus and underground services – will enter a period of “managed decline”.
Despite this apparent doomsday scenario, the Bicycle Association’s report maintains that boosting bike usage in London can be a cost-effective way to fulfil Mayor Sadiq Khan’s pledge to make the city net-zero by 2030.
“By 2030, it’s not just the positive environmental benefit of net-zero which will be dramatic,” said the organisation’s Simon Irons, “but the economic benefits, too.”
The report argues that, “Providing better and safer conditions for cycling helps to encourage more people to cycle. As the levels of cycling increase, so too does the demand for bicycles, their accessories and related services, generating significant economic benefits for the London economy and new green jobs.”
> Transport for London wins appeal over Streetspace active travel programme
“A large-scale shift to cycling from private car use is essential to achieving net-zero carbon status by 2030,” says Dr. Ashok Sinha, CEO of the London Cycling Campaign. “Investing in high-quality cycling infrastructure will not only enable this shift but generate a huge number of new, green, career opportunities, especially for the most disadvantaged Londoners.”
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.
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21 comments
Ugh, this comment section has been hijacked by Nigel Fromage. Ignore it - and it will go away.
I agree with you. He is very much against active travel and has a track record of distracting threads that show there are great benefits to society from a greater take up of active travel.
yeah but road tax
How does the maths of trebling bicycle use work? Is there a quirk that means trebling numbers of bike trips amounts to an increase from 2 to 14%?
Depends on gear ratios, I suppose...
I'm guessing (and maths is very much not my strong point) that there's an assumption that the modal share of other modes would fall as cycling increased, i.e. not only does cycling increase but fewer people drive because it does?
ETA much to my surprise I seem to be right - looking at the report trebling cycle use would result in a 14% modal share.
so 100 people are travelling
2 of them by bike, 98 by other means
trebling cycle usage means 6 travel by bike, if this is now 14% model share that means now only 43 people are travelling in total, and 57 people who used to travel are now sitting at home sulking because there are more bikes on the road.
I'm sure you've read and analyzed the report and haven't just produced a kneejerk sneer?
Like dicking around spreading lies and hatred on a website where virtually everybody holds you in contempt? Gotcha.
What like saying people like me deserve a heart attack?
I mean it's not like I literally had an uncle die from a massive heart attack a couple of days ago.
Surely that's just part of his self-described "hilarious banter" like the rest of his fat-shaming, misogynist and racist comments?
Sorry about your uncle, RIP.
Thanks Rendel.
Yes that's going to be him thinking he is being funny.
He seems to have the mentality of a small child, everything has to be about him, and if he doesn't get the attention he wants he starts lashing out at others and making comments to get attention.
Seriously you are going to try that utter crock of BS?
What you actually referred to was the fact that one of the Characters in Sex in the City died from a heart attack on a peloton.
Or are you going to deny that's what you said?
No Nigel what you said was a thinly veiled comment about you thinking that I should be bought a Peloton bike so that I have a heart attack. Nothing more nothing less.
Is that because your mother has decided you've had enough screen time today?
He asked you if you'd asked your mother's opinion - seeing as you inflicted upon us a few days earlier a tedious lengthy screed that allegedly was your mother's opinion it was a perfectly reasonable comment.
You can continue your silly little attempts to portray me as a sexist as long as you wish, I'm not the person who describes young adult women with whose opinions I disagree as "silly little girls" and says that if they were male they should have been beaten on the bottom - that's you.
No Nige, the joke was about you..... not your mother..... but that seems to have been way too complex for you to grasp.
And there is a million miles of difference between making a joke about the fact that you probably still stay at home with your mum..... and making a "joke" about suggesting that someone deserves a heart attack.
Erm, so I have read it - well, skimmed it - and can confirm that it appears to be nonsense. The report talks about a six-fold increase in trips, and a 50% increase in the average trip length. What seems to have happened is that Carlton Reid has mixed that up with what they estimate to be a consequent trebling of associated economic activity (and road.cc have then regurgitated that without reading it first).
If it's wrong then fine, I've only glanced at it – my point was that our resident troll rejects anything in favour of cycling out of hand without analysis and by his own admission did not read this report before condemning it.
ETA had a closer look, so re "sixfold" it says:
The potential for further growth in cycling in London is substantial with an estimated 3.1 million car driver trips a day potentially cycleable. If these were converted into actual cycle trips, this could result in an estimated cycle mode share of 14% and taking account of forecast population growth, a six-fold increase in cycling trips by 2030.
Sixfold = six times more, about what one would expect for an increase from 2% to 14%. The report does admit:
Although this sounds ambitious more than eighty world cities already achieve this cycling mode share (including UK cities) and rapid increases in cycling have been demonstrated in the UK and elsewhere.
Highly ambitious but not nonsense, it's effectively taking the best case scenario and saying what the outcomes would be if it happened.
Yes - and to clarify, when I said 'it's nonsense' I didn't mean the report - only the way that Reid and road.cc have ballsed up the numbers in it.
where is the current 2% modal share assumption coming from? 2% might be the figure nationally but in london it is higher because (stick) driving is not practical) and (carrot) cycle infrastructure is
goodbetter than most places.