Pedal Power - The Unstoppable Growth of Cycling

[summerdays]

Exactly, @summerdays. I just don't understand people who think you're a plonker just because you use Strava or a.n.other tool for logging your rides.

It just means I'm someone who records things.... I take my meter readings each week too

And I love turning those figures into maps of where I have been!

 

[summerdays]

A map of loads of trips to the cupboard under the stairs must be ever so slightly dull.

Mine are outside... a map of routes taken might show which door was my favourite one to use when going to take a meter reading.... but still quite dull!

 

[mjr]

It's only a problem if they make it one....

Sure, which could be if they fall victim to those insisting they should "aim to make constsnt improvement" on boards like this.

 

[bpsmith]

Or those insisting that they don't set themselves a target because other people don't like the idea?

 

[Mugshot]

And with all due respect, I'm not poo-pooing their efforts, but suggesting obsessive target fixation is unhealthy and will catch up with them eventually when they either start getting old or ill, leaving them disillusioned and bereft if they don't get over it, come to terms with their own mortality and rejoice - you're not getting out of this alive! If you want to chase targets for a while, enjoy it, but there's more to cycling than that.

I think most people would agree that there are many different aspects for people to enjoy and some people enjoy some aspects but not others, you seem to have something of an issue with people openly admitting to enjoying aspects of cycling which you do not.

 

[Roxy641]

We are missing out if we only accept that people should be doing it for a sport. There are many reasons that people cycle. For
me it's environmental, it's to get fit, it's enjoying where I'm traveling, and sometimes just because it's cheaper (and sometimes
quicker) to cycle to work than use public transport. But out of the "sporty" things you mentioned, I am interested in seeing if I
can improve on my time to takes me to cycle 3 miles. I'm not really into racing against others, but hey, if others want to do
that, fine.

The more reasons we give for the reasons for cycling, the less the media can stereotype us into being all the same. I want more
people to take up cycling, not less.

Unfortunately there are too many of the type who walk up a hill pushing their bike so they can roll down the other side shouting 'weeee'. People who 'enjoy the simple pleasures of riding a bike'. I always thought that mentality was for 7 year olds.

Cycling is a sport. You should do it to the best of your ability and aim to make constsnt improvement. I can't understand how so many 'cyclists' have no interest in times, power, speed etc. It's like going to the gym and lifting the same weight every time, never adding more.

 

[Roxy641]

Hi Red17,

I can't speak for outside London/Surrey which is where I do most of my cycling, but numbers have definetely increased. I'm sure there are
cycling groups that can confirm this when they count the number of cyclists (and perhaps other groups who are interested in collecting
statistics in the numbers of cars/bicycles, motorbikes etc are doing this too).

Would be interesting to know what measurement they were using. Surveys available on the web (TFL / government) that I can find show actual numbers of cyclists increasing dramatically since 2001, but the % of the population commuting by bike staying fairly constant.

All depends how you want to present the statistics.

 

[Pale Rider]

Seems to me London is unique - no doubt there's been a massive increase in cycling in the last 20 years.

Elsewhere, I think the boom is largely illusory.

Around here - the north east - people who have been riding for many more years than me reckon numbers are stubbornly static.

My mate organises the Durham Big Ride, he gets about 500 riders for the two main rides.

Numbers go up and down a bit each year, but there's certainly no boom in participation.

The biggest local sportive - Marie Curie Etape Pennines - was permanently cancelled a couple of years ago.

That was partly due to local opposition to road marshalling, but declining interest played a bigger part in the decision.

http://road.cc/content/news/136611-...e-pennines-axed-due-lack-participant-interest

 

[summerdays]

I don't know what the figures are for here but I'm convinced that the numbers are continuing to rise! There is no doubt that they have gone up since I first started about 10 years ago.

 

[srw]

Seems to me London is unique - no doubt there's been a massive increase in cycling in the last 20 years.

Elsewhere, I think the boom is largely illusory.

Around here - the north east - people who have been riding for many more years than me reckon numbers are stubbornly static.

url=http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN06224.pdf

Take a look in there and you can probably see if he's right or wrong. I'm on a phone or I'd do more research.

 

[Pat "5mph"]

I don't know what the figures are for here but I'm convinced that the numbers are continuing to rise! There is no doubt that they have gone up since I first started about 10 years ago.

I think here it's the same.
When I started five years ago I never saw any other cyclists till I got to the city centre.
Now every day I see at least half a dozen riding from by area to town, more depending on what time I set out.
They are plainly utilitarian cyclists: for example, last Sunday I rode to my local retail estate, I counted 8 people getting there by bike, plus somebody took my favorite bike parking spot at B&Q!
There are no proper bike parking spaces in that estate, still people are riding in, which I find remarkable seeing that a retail estate is designed to be reached by car or bus.

 

[Pale Rider]

url=http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN06224.pdf

Take a look in there and you can probably see if he's right or wrong. I'm on a phone or I'd do more research.

This graph from the document shows a huge decline in bike use from the 1950s with the explosion of car ownership.

Flat line - give or take - from the 1980s until 2011.

Hardly looks like boom time to me.

 

[summerdays]

This graph from the document shows a huge decline in bike use from the 1950s with the explosion of car ownership.

Flat line - give or take - from the 1980s until 2011.

Hardly looks like boom time to me.

View attachment 143854

But that is presumably for the country... Not in specific locations. I passed (more likely they passed me) 20 cyclists this morning on my commute... according to Strava. Well I know that at one point I was in a queue of 11 waiting to cross the motorway slip road so I know the Strava figures are only a proportion of the total.

Actually just checked the Strava flyby and none of the 11 are in my flyby. A couple of years ago I would have considered 5 would be the most I'd see at that spot.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

I think the unstoppable growth of cycling hereabouts has stopped.

 

[mjr]

You also need to understand that the figures come from the National Road Traffic Survey... which are notoriously inaccurate when it come to cycling and tends to concentrate on roads that cyclists tend not to use.

Indeed. There are two other major sources of cycling statistics, but both are flawed: the Active People Survey (APS) and the travel-to-work questions in the Census. The Census is detailed but only every decade, only about commuting and IIRC can't cope with multi-modal journeys (so bike-train-bike will probably be counted as train). APS is more general, annual and differentiates leisure and transport cycling, but doesn't have sufficient numbers to produce small area statistics.

Then there's a mixed bag of automatic counters on cycleways (which suffer many faults and may only be obtained by FoI requests), urban cordon counts (often also in inappropriate NRTS-style locations), spotchecks to support major planning applications and so on. They're not collected anywhere central AFAIK, so using them is relatively expensive.

England is really rubbish at measuring cycle traffic and even worse at modelling it.