Friday, 13 December 2024
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Cycle Republic takes a closer look at the UK’s most popular cycling locations

To find out how cyclists compare across the country, Cycle Republic has conducted a study using data from the UK government, the European Union, and the European Cycling Federation. It’s main findings were:

* London has the greatest number of riders with 853,581

* One in four people in Hackney ride their bikes regularly

* Cambridge has the highest percentage of cyclists in the UK – 54% of its population

* South West and South East lead the way for commuter cycling, and massively outperform northern regions like Yorkshire and the Humber

* There are more cyclists in Germany than the Netherlands and Denmark combined

* Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Ljubljana the three best European cycling cities

In terms of sheer volume of cyclists, London is the most popular cycling city in the UK. There’s incredible variation between the different London boroughs:

* Hackney was top for cyclists with 56,767 (26% of 218,543 pop.)

* Southwark was second with 53,568 (21% of 255,551 pop.)

* Lambeth third, with 50,409 (19% of 267,276 pop.)

* Redbridge (14,549 cyclists), Harrow (12,309) and Sutton (9,202) had the lowest number of cyclists

In the rest of England, the city with the greatest number of cyclists is Birmingham, charging ahead decisively with 87,000 regular riders.

* Bristol came in second place with 76,882

* Manchester third with 62,783

* Many London boroughs matched larger cities, with Hackney outranking Leeds (56,392), Liverpool (48,796), Sheffield (46,103) and York (43,830)

Cambridge is the only location where the volume of cyclists outnumbers the number of non-cyclists with 54% of the population cycling each week (56,531 vs. 47,685).

Though the Netherlands and Denmark have the greatest modal shares of cyclists per population, the country with the largest number of cyclists is Germany with 9.9m – more than the Netherlands (6.1m) and Denmark (1.3) combined. Meanwhile and surprisingly, the UK sits in eighth place (2m) behind much smaller countries including Hungary (2.1m) and Poland (2.7m).

* Germany leads with 9.9m

* Holland clinches second place with 6.1m

* Italy third with 3.6m

* Denmark lags behind Belgium (1.5m), Spain (1.4m) and Romania (1.4m) – but has the greatest number of cyclists in relation to population

‘It’s excellent to see cycling flourishing in areas of the country like Hackney where it’s received considerable investment’, said Cycle Republic’s Managing Director Peter Kimberley.

‘We hope it’ll be a clear sign to councils across the country that investment in cycling infrastructure really pays off’.

To explore the rest of the findings head, head to the Cycle Republic blog at: https://www.cyclerepublic.com/blog/cycling-across-europe-uk-abroad.