Cycling Statistics

Following my last blog post about finding some statistics about the number of cyclists in the UK I discovered for myself just how tricky it is to get hold of figures.

Firstly the National Statistics website itself proved difficult to search and showed me no obvious results. I remembered attending a user group a couple of years ago suggesting that looking for official figures was best done on Google. This may have worked better.

Newsbank proved more rewarding, although alot of cycling stories are about horrific accidents or the UK cycling prospects at the 2012 Olympics. Both of these topics were interesting, and potentially useful. No wonder people are reticent to use a bike in London I thought. Then again, success at The Games, and some cyclig superstars might be a boost for the bike. Do people really call Boris Johnson Bo-Jo by the way ?

Then I struck gold with an article from the Sunday Times.

Laurance(2011)notes that in the 1940's one third of all vehicle trvel was by bike. This figure has now declined to less than 2% . Two thirds of the population never cycle, or get on a bike less than once per year.


There was also some good news. But I'll save that for another blog-post.

Laurance, B (2011) Cycling hits the wild side as Britain gets back in the saddle, Times, May 29th. Accessed via Newsbank [online] http://library.beds.ac.uk on 9th August 2011