TfL’s London wide cycle count - What can it tell us about cycling in London? Part 3, inner London

This is the third 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 previous analyses it was clear that central London cycle levels declined between 2019 and 2021, whilst in outer London cycling increased somewhat. But the forecasts of a 10 fold increase, propaganda suggesting 200% rises from the Mayor of London and his cycling Commissioner, Will Norman are demonstrably wrong.

The data is available at: https://cycling.data.tfl.gov.uk/.

Inner London

Tfl has previously reported the change in volume of cycling between 2019 and 2021 in its annual statistics report, Travel in London 14, as a rise of 4.6% in inner London using this data. In the most recent Travel in London 15 report there isn’t a figure, but from a chart in the report, they look to have increased their estimate to about 10%. Below is an analysis of the inner London count, which shows some growth in inner London between 2019 and 2021, but again no ‘boom’.

There are 650 inner London count sites. The counts have been undertaken every spring since 2015 except in 2020 when, because of Covid, a subset of sites were counted in the autumn. Only Mondays to Fridays are counted for a 16 hour day, 6am till 10pm*. Below is an image from the TfL report showing the count sites.

Looking at all the counts, the median shows the central change between 2019 and 2021 was an 11% increase in cycles.

An interesting set of counts is of the inner London bridges because they effectively route all cycle traffic over a wide area onto the same road to give a more consistent count over the years. Hammersmith Bridge was not counted in 2020.

The most interesting of the individual sites are the busiest cycling streets. Comparing 2019 with 2021 for the busiest 10 inner London counts in 2019 shows a spread of change from an increase of +33% (Kingsland Road) to a decrease of -61% (Chelsea Embankment).

It is interesting in the era of ‘working from home’ to look at the amount of commuting as a a proportion of daily cycling. Below the chart represents the morning commute measured as the count between 7am and 10am compared to the whole day. All commuting (to and from work) will be double this percentage.

Of course leisure cycling is a good thing, but it doesn't generally contribute to congestion reduction at the peak hours which is a key issue for cities.

Hackney has a uniquely high mode share for cycling and so is especially interesting. Below is the chart of all its inner London count sites. Particularly striking is the high levels of cycling on the A10, that many from the new cycle lobby say is too scary to cycle on!

Selecting roads that have been nominally improved for cyclists and comparing these to the TfL road, the A10 through Hackney, its difficult to make a case that the lines of plastic poles on Green Lanes and Queensbridge Road have made any difference to cycling levels.

Conclusion

Overall cycling has increased (from a very low base) on weekdays in inner London between 2019 and 2021. My analysis shows the central figure of all counts to be an increase of 11%.

There is no evidence of a cycling boom in inner London, despite the Mayor of London and his Cycling Czar, Will Norman commentary. This growth is on a very small base and known to be limited to a small demographic of London’s population. On the face of it, the growth is in cycling for leisure.

Notes

* There were some errors in the data reported by TfL and I noted some duplication in the published figures. I have left out the sites TfL had problems with, but I have been able to correct those where there was duplication.