TfL is getting people off public transport and onto bikes, says report

Data on travel behaviour suggests that increasing numbers of frequent tube and bus users are cycling, according to The Guardian, as TfL hails a five per cent increase in cycling trips within the central London congestion charge zone in just one year.

Dave Hill reports on his blog that increases in cycling trips have been greatest for frequent tube users as TfL reports a year-on-year increase for quarter one of 2016 following the construction of the majority of the phases of the east-west and north-south cycle superhighways, which it has billed as the "Crossrail for bikes". TfL says there has been a 50% increase in the use of these two segregated cycleways since July in the morning peaks, taking the totals to 8,400 using Blackfriars Bridge and 7,000 using Victoria Embankment.

Hill suggests that a number of these cyclists are also public transport users. He cites the example from the data that in the 2005/08 survey period for the London Travel Demand surveys justunder one in 100 Londoners who used the Underground five or more times a week also made a trip by bike during that week. By 2012/15 that had risen to 3.7 in every hundred - nearly a four-fold increase. There was also an increase in five-or-more-a-week bus passengers, but it was smaller - from 1.36 in 100 to "nearly three".

He says: "What conclusions can be drawn from these numbers? Well, maybe that overcrowding on the tube is more hellish than on buses. Maybe that the sorts of people who use the tube a lot are more like the sorts of people who cycle. Maybe both."