Bikes form 25 percent of rush-hour traffic

Data released by TfL shows that there are more bikes on the road than ever. A survey was conducted by manual counts at 164 locations in central London over a two-week period during April 2013. Bikes and all motor vehicles were counted between 6am & 8pm on weekdays. In the morning peak up to 64 per cent of vehicles on some main roads in town are now bicycles. Cycles make up almost half of all northbound traffic crossing Waterloo, Blackfriars and London Bridge, and 62 per cent of all northbound traffic crossing Southwark Bridge in the morning peak are cyclists.

They are the largest single type of vehicle on each of these bridges, outnumbering cars in each case. Across the whole day between 6am & 8pm 9245 bicycles crossed London Bridge, the highest-volume all-day route counted, averaging 660 bicycles an hour or 11 a minute. On the highest-volume morning peak route, Elephant & Castle roundabout, 2710 bikes passed in just the northbound direction, an average of 903 an hour or 15 a minute in just this one direction.

The figure excludes bikes using the Cycle Superhighway bike bypass around Elephant & Castle, so the total number of bikes through this area is even greater. In total, the TfL survey found 24 per cent of all vehicles at sites counted in central London during the morning rush hour are bicycles and make up 16 per cent of traffic across the entire day. At the top ten main roads for cycle traffic bikes represent 42 per cent of the traffic in the morning peak but take up as little as 12 per cent of the road space. This is based on the assumption that a bike takes up a fifth of the space of a car and a tenth of the space of a bus.