Commuting Statistics?

[AnotherEye]

Can anyone please help me find some statistics.
On average: how many people in the UK cycle to work each day?
On average: how many people in the UK drive to work each day?

How many cyclists take up the same space on the road as an average size car?

Why I need to know:
Hypothetically; if every cyclist drove to work, what would be the percentage increase in cars on the road.
What effect would this have on the average speed of motorists.
Where would the gridlock hot-spots be (London, of course)?

Anything else that would help me develope the argument that motorists benefit from an increase in cycle commuting?

thanks

 

[gaz]

For london there are half a million journeys each day made on bicycle (thats working day).

Everything else i don't know.

 

[HLaB]

You'll find lots of stats on the DfT web site, their Personal Travel Factsheets although slightly out of date (2007) sum things up well and in other reports do similar. IIRC only about 2% of the population cycle. The big argument I see it for more bikes is the positive 'externalities' ie a person not in the car means that there is more space on the road, less congestion etc. I don't know if anybody has put actual figures on externalities but its existence is well documented. There'll also be studies on the effect of a bike on traffic speeds

For cars to bikes I can only guess but the average car takes up around 5-6m (including braking gap) and are 2m wide in a approximately 3.65m lane. At a guess you could comfortably fit 4 bikes in that space more if you squeezed things.

 

[snorri]

You might get some helpful figures from the National Travel Survey.
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/nts/

 

[HJ]

How many cyclists take up the same space on the road as an average size car?

Theoretically you can get ten plus cyclists in the same road space as an average size car, but most normal cyclist would ride in a peloton like that, so six would be a more likely figure.

 

[marinyork]

You'll find lots of stats on the DfT web site, their Personal Travel Factsheets although slightly out of date (2007) sum things up well and in other reports do similar. IIRC only about 2% of the population cycle. The big argument I see it for more bikes is the positive 'externalities' ie a person not in the car means that there is more space on the road, less congestion etc. I don't know if anybody has put actual figures on externalities but its existence is well documented. There'll also be studies on the effect of a bike on traffic speeds

One of the interesting externalities is early deaths caused by pollution (directly attributed to cars). For my city the whole lot is estimated at £95m. Unless some magic bullet is found we're going to be fined millions of pounds by the EU for breaches in a rather similar sort of way that happened with bin collections.

 

[Davidc]

It isn't just commuting that's important, all the utility cycling for shopping and general transport needs to be considered.

Put all those journeys in cars and apart from increasing the council's car park revenue it would significantly increase traffic congestion and pollution.