TfL’s London wide cycle count - What can it tell us about cycling in London? Part 2, outer London.

This is the second of three blog posts analysing TfL’s London wide cycle count. The count has been running since 2015 and is divided into central, inner and outer London, with over 1000 sites across London, and over two million items of data. It is designed to estimate the volume of cycling for the whole of London and so has some limitations when considering individual sites and counts. Nevertheless, it provides a fascinating insight into, and compelling evidence of, what is happening to levels of cycling in London. 

In the the previous blog post looking at central London, cycle volume declined between 2019 and 2021. The propaganda of the Mayor of London and his Cycling Czar is that cycling is booming. It is not. Below is my analysis of the outer London count.

Outer London

In outer London Tfl reported the change in volume of cycling between 2019 and 2021 in its annual statistics report as a rise of 19.9%. Below is an analysis of the outer London count, which shows some growth in outer London, but hardly a boom.

There are 451 outer London sites. The counts have been undertaken every spring since 2015 except in 2020, because of Covid, when a subset of 200+ sites were counted in the autumn. Only Mondays to Fridays are counted for a 16 hour day, 6am till 10pm.

Looking at all the counts, the median shows the central change between 2019 and 2021 was a 16% increase in cycles.

The most interesting of the individual sites are the busiest cycling roads. Comparing 2019 with 2021 for the busiest 10 outer London counts in 2019 shows a spread of changes from an increase of +46% to a decrease of -36%.

For further context below is a chart showing all the Chiswick High Road counts since 2015. All were conducted in the spring, bar the 2020 count, conducted in the autumn. On the face of it most of the rise in cycling occurred before the installation of the bike lane installed in December 2020. 

Note: A recent tweet from the London Cycling Commissioner, Will Norman, implied that the rise was BECAUSE of the bike lane.

Below a chart of the other busy sites.

It is possible to select out the counts by the hour. Below the chart shows commuter cycling during the morning peak hours (7am til 10am) in comparison to the whole day (6am til 10pm). Commuting is flat, suggesting the increase in 2020 and 2021 is non-commuting.

Below another set of sites that are around the median change between 2019 and 2021 of +16%. These give a fair sense of what is happening overall.

And finally, a sense of cycling gender can be gained as the count enumerators noted gender of the cyclist in the outer London counts. The figures vary greatly from site to site and year to year, but the median figure is 13% female.

Conclusion

Overall cycling has increased (from a very low base of less than 2%) on weekdays in outer London since 2015. Particularly, cycling rose between 2019 and 2021 during non-commuting hours. TfL calculate the increase in cycling volume as 19.9%. My analysis shows the central figure of all counts to be an increase of 16%, which is quite similar. On the face of it, the growth is in cycling for leisure.

There is no evidence of the much vaunted cycling boom that the Mayor of London and his Cycling Czar, Will Norman have stated repeatedly, despite the many millions spent on this niche mode, and the neglect of other modes.