Cycling soars in the City
Cycling up 70% in 2024 versus pre-pandemic 2017, while car use down 34%...
Cycling up 70% in 2024 versus pre-pandemic 2017, while car use down 34%...
In the space of eight years the City of London (London’s financial district) has not just met a target to increase cycling by half by 2030, but smashed it early, recording a 70 percent increase across its 30 traffic counters from 2017 to 2024.
Growth in just the last two years from 2022 to 2024 for cycling has been 57 percent (albeit comparing early October 2024 volumes to late November 2022). And that welcome 70 percent growth in cycling from 2017 has been accompanied by a 34 percent fall in car use over the same time period.
In the daytime, cycles are now 39 percent of all traffic in the City, and number twice as many on the streets in daytime than private cars, private hire and taxis combined.
In the peak hours, this is even more pronounced: with cycling being 56 percent of all journeys. Add in walking and wheeling, and active travel is responsible for more than 85 percent of rush hour journeys.
The City has been tracking traffic since 1999. Over the last two and a half decades, motor traffic volumes have dropped to a third of what they were then, according to these latest figures.
This latest report highlights the moments of change that led to such significant mode shift away from private motor vehicles and towards cycling, according to City’s officers: “the introduction of the Congestion Charge in 2003, the Global Recession in 2008-09, the introduction of Cycle Superhighways in the City in 2015-16 and the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020-22”.
People cycling a day
Increase in numbers from 2017
Reduction in motor traffic
As the officers make clear in the report, change in travel has of course not just happened. London’s now iconic Cycleways – along the Embankment, across Blackfriars Bridge and down Farringdon Road (both opened by former Mayor Boris Johnson in 2016 and backed by LCC) are clearly making cycling to, and through, the City a more attractive proposition. The two routes alone clock-up over 1,500 cycle trips per hour at peak times.
Another factor contributing to the welcome cycling growth in the City are constraints on through motor traffic at junctions like Bank, where cyclist Ying Tao was killed by a lorry in 2015.
Regrettably, the City is planning to reverse the Bank restriction for taxis this spring, which could not only undermine cycling growth but also safety.
The message being sent by the sharp growth in active travel in London’s financial centre is that safe cycle routes and restrictions on through motor traffic can deliver a more sustainable and more pleasant urban environment that results in more people walking, wheeling and cycling.
It also confirms what surveys have signalled for decades, that, given the right conditions for cycling, a large proportion of the population is prepared to take to two wheels.
Data from TfL shows that 40 percent of Londoners are now either cycling already or considering doing so.
The new City data also shows a significant share of the cycling growth in the ‘Square Mile’, about 40 percent of the growth, has come from dockless hire bikes (Lime and Forest), but that personal bike use also rose sharply, accounting for 60 percent of the increase since 2022.
Dockless hire is obviously rapidly growing in London and particularly central areas. In the City, dockless hire rates have quadrupled in just the last two years and now make up 17% of all cycles counted.
Cycling across bridges into and out of the City has soared as well, with London Bridge, where new cycle lanes are in place, outstripping neighbours in the past five years.
The clear conclusion is more Londoners want to cycle, whether on their own or hire bikes. And that what helps them achieve that are high quality cycle lanes, safer junctions and secure places to park their cycles.
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