London now cycling 1.5 million journeys
Cycling levels up nearly 13% year-on-year says new TfL data.
Cycling levels up nearly 13% year-on-year says new TfL data.
TfL has today released new ‘Travel In London’ report data showing cycling journeys are up 12.7 percent across all of London in 2025 (until, it appears, September) compared to 2024, with an average of 1.5 million journeys being cycled across London daily, up from 1.33 million last year.
This is huge news – cycling is growing rapidly in London. And not just in central London too – cycling is up 12.8 percent in central, a whopping 14.8 percent in inner London and even outer London is up 9.9 percent.
We’re at the point where compared to an all year average of 3.2 million tube journeys daily, cycling now accounts for nearly half of all tube journeys in London – up from a third in just a couple of years.
The new levels also mean cycling might be over 5 percent mode share in 2025 – as overall journey rates in London still haven’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels, cycling is taking a bigger share of journeys. In 2024 cycling’s mode share was 4.7 percent.
Until we see a lot more detail from TfL with their next full Travel In London report, it’s difficult to assess exactly what’s going on, but we’d suggest that the growth in cycling comes down to two major themes…
We have heard several times that ‘gig economy’ cycling for companies such as Uber Eats and Deliveroo now accounts for circa 10 percent of all cycling in London – obviously though this is a relatively small number of riders each doing lots of journeys daily.
But a second circa 10 percent is now accounted for by dockless hire cycle journeys from users of Lime, Forest, Voi and other operators’ bikes.
Both types of riders and approaches are undeniably causing issues for Londoners, some serious and significant, but also both are broadly part of a revolution for movement away from private motor vehicles and towards more and a wider range of people cycling more for ‘everyday’ journeys.
It’s impossible to tell exactly for now how much the growth in cycling is down to dockless etc. and how much is down to TfL and London’s councils rollout of more cycling infrastructure (as well as the lag from that already delivered to people changing behaviour).
But TfL’s release says that the ‘strategic cycle network’ of TfL-signed ‘Cycleways’ now stands at 431km, up from 90km in 2016. The role infrastructure plays anecdotally chimes with the growth visible for central, inner and outer London.
Central London includes Westminster, where happily we have seen in the last few months a sudden leap forward in delivery of cycling infrastructure, but where until mid-2025, there really was only TfL-delivered schemes that were barely tolerated by past administrations, such as Cycleway C3 along the Embankment and around Parliament Square and indeed Kensington & Chelsea – the borough that point blank refuses to deliver coherent, safe cycling routes.
It is the inner London boroughs, particularly Camden, that have been delivering more high-quality and safe cycling routes over the last few years.
Indeed, of nine inner London boroughs, just about all bar Hammersmith & Fulham, Tower Hamlets and Wandsworth, are delivering major schemes at pace – with Newham particularly now delivering at pace.
H&F and Wandsworth also continue to inch forward, with only Tower Hamlets at a standstill (and still threatening to roll back infrastructure if the court case against them fails).
Whereas, in outer London, only Hounslow and Waltham Forest really are delivering high-quality schemes and at a pace. Hence the slower rate of growth.
Until outer London boroughs, TfL and the Mayor really grasp delivering high-quality schemes around town centres, learning the lessons of the ‘mini-Holland’ schemes of Waltham Forest, Enfield and Kingston, then outer London will remain the weakest link for cycling.
While LCC has serious reservations about the quality TfL’s Cycleways are achieving in some areas, new research does say 76 per cent of people using them “felt safe all or most of the time”, again underlining an obvious and sensible preference for decent quality and safe-feeling routes over what came before and can still be the core routes too often in some parts of London.
The good news on this is circa a third of all cycling in London takes place on a Cycleway, even though these only account for 2.5 percent of cyclable roads. 29 per cent of Londoners now live within 400m of a Cycleway – but the aim is for that to be 40 percent by 2030, so better get a crack on in outer London then…
Of course, the latest figures only underline further that not only is cycling in London, a true ‘mega city’, growing fast, and also that for the city to sustain or exceed such growth then outer London remains the big potential, but also just how ludicrously cheap cycling is to deliver amazing outcomes from.
London’s funding situation – for councils and for TfL for transport – remains in a precarious position.
The current government seems very clearly minded to spend more national funding outside the capital, all while TfL remains one of the few transport authorities for cities on the planet that is expected to be self-funding (on revenue terms), and while more global city Mayors talk about free public transport or fare subsidies rather than fare freezes, and while many London councils openly talk about edging closer to bankruptcy.
In this context, obviously there’s a fight between competing priorities for any funding at all. But it’s also hopefully obvious to everyone that cycling and active travel spending is generally and specifically in London extraordinarily effective per pound put in.
The data is clear that spending on active travel should be a massive priority – particularly when it results in outcomes like this, and the knock-on climate emissions, road danger, productivity and NHS savings (from inactivity-related ill health) numbers like this deliver.
The Mayor has committed in his last manifesto to maintaining current active travel spending – but actually, the case is clear to massively increase it and indeed, if the Mayor wants to hit Net Zero, Vision Zero safety and mode shift targets, he also needs to start hitting motorists a bit harder in the wallet too says all the evidence – his increasing the congestion charge for the first time since 2020, early next year is a good step on this.
But more boldness not just on cycle schemes but also on motor traffic reduction needed. This is particularly highlighted by the Mayor’s progress on his ambition for 80 percent of all London journeys to be “active, efficient and sustainable” (ie walking, cycling and public transport) by 2041.
The current share for that is estimated at 63.4 percent in 2024, compared to 63.0 per cent in 2023, and 63.6 per cent before the pandemic – indeed, this mode share hasn’t really changed much since 2013 or before, despite cycling growing.
It’s also worth however contrasting how London is doing on cycling to the rest of England.
Attempting to compare national DfT data to TfL data isn’t easy, but it does look like London’s cycling numbers alone make up circa 60 percent of the total estimated number of daily cycling journeys across England!
In other words, London’s cycling rates are larger than the rest of England’s put together, rounding up Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham, Leicester, Bristol, Brighton and, well, everywhere else.
In summary then, amazing work London – well on our way to becoming a cycling mega-city. But a lot more for the Mayor, TfL and outer London boroughs to do to get there.
Join as a member
LCC is highly effective because it's supported by more than 12,000 members. If you cycle in London please consider joining today. You'll be supporting our work and you'll get a huge range of benefits.
Keep up to date
