Q10: What’s cycling’s potential, and why is it such a good investment?

Q10: What’s cycling’s potential, and why is it such a good investment?

Cycling has a lot going for it already, and its potential is massive.

In Q1, we looked at why more cycling, as a convenient, inexpensive and healthy physical activity, could tackle lifethreatening conditions and save the NHS money. It’s also low carbon, zero emission, creates jobs and a proven, economically sound investment for public and private money. Yes, people do need to be encouraged, especially by creating safer road conditions: around two-thirds of the population think it’s too dangerous for them to cycle on the roads.50

But no one can say, even now, that it has no appeal, worth or potential, or that adequate funding and political will won’t help cycle trip figures rise from around 2% in the UK until they match the levels of other European countries, e.g. 27% of trips in The Netherlands, 16% in Denmark and 12% in Germany.

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Mass appeal

Already, fun or fitness makes cycling a particularly popular activity for people aged 16 or over, more so than swimming and team sports; and it’s one of the ten most listed most prevalent activities for children aged 5-16 (about a quarter of them said, when asked, that they’d ridden their bikes over the last week).52 Cycle commuting is already flourishing in London, where the congestion charge, public hire bikes, segregated cycle lanes and other incentives have unlocked much suppressed demand. Around six times as many people cycled across the central cordon in 2019 than in 1977 – 168,000 compared to 27,000. 53 Even during the pandemic

50 DfT. National Travel Attitudes Study. Table NTASA101a. This figure is for England, but it more or less matches the results of earlier, GB-wide surveys that asked the same question for years. 51 See Q15 of Cycling UK’s Cycling Statistics 52 Relates to England. Sport England. Active Lives surveys, 2020-21 53 Transport for London. Travel in London Reports 12 & 14.

in 2020, 161,000 cycles still managed to flock over the cordon. In fact, during the Covid-19 pandemic in spring 2020, daily car use dropped nationwide and cycle use shot up, often doubling or tripling when compared to an equivalent day just before lockdown. 54 Clearly, many people seized the moment to exercise and enjoy the much quieter roads.

We mustn’t underestimate public support for measures to encourage cycling and walking nor, for that matter, overestimate the opposition:

• In 2020, Cycling UK commissioned a YouGov survey to reveal people’s views on new, pandemic-related active travel schemes being introduced all over the UK (e.g. cycle lanes, restricting through motor traffic in residential areas and 20mph limits). We found the majority supported them (56%), and only 19% opposed, yet respondents assumed public support was lower (33%) and opposition much higher (29%).55 • Another YouGov survey, this time for #BikeIsBest, discovered that for every 1 person against measures in their local area to encourage cycling and walking, there’s 6.5 who back them. They also found that for every 1 person who disagreed that “Britain would be better if more people cycled”, 3.26 agreed. Again, respondents “drastically overestimated the negativity towards cycling” – they thought that only 1.88 of their friends, and 1.74 of the public agreed for every 1 who disagreed. 56

54 DfT. Transport use during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. 55 Cycling UK press release. New research finds public overestimates opposition to new bike lanes by 50%. 20 Nov 2020. (The rest either had no strong opinion, or didn’t know). 56 #BikeIsBest. Public backs greener, safer streets but is being silenced by minority. 23 July 2019.

Healthy investment

Investing public money in walking and cycling offers a ‘high’ to ‘very high’ benefit to cost ratio (BCR), the average return being around £5-6 for every £1 invested.57 (Road building schemes – bypasses, widening, upgrades to motorway standards etc. – have repeatedly failed to live up to their economic promise58).

• We know that central funding spent wisely makes a difference: in the six Cycling

Demonstration Towns (2008-2011), for example, there was an overall increase of 29% in cycling trips.59 • A compact town optimised for walking and cycling can have a “retail density” (spend per square metre) 2.5 times higher than a typical urban centre; and, also per square metre, cycle parking delivers five times higher retail spend than the same area of car parking.60 • The TUC estimated that, along with energy efficient upgrades and reforestation, building cycle lanes and pedestrianisation came top for immediate job creation (direct and supply chain jobs) per £1 million investment.61 • For places with tourist attractions and/or set in tempting countryside or by the sea, catering for cycling visitors makes sense. Who wouldn’t want a share of the c£520m that cycling and mountain biking is estimated to contribute to

British tourism every year?62

We’ll stop there for now, but not because we’re running thin on evidence. Above is just a fraction of the research out there on the returns on investing in cycling.

Read more in Cycling UK’s:

• Getting there with cycling: the Case for building cycling infrastructure – an evidence review’ (2022) • Economic benefits of cycle tourism (2020)

57 DfT. Investing in Cycling and Walking: The economic case for action. 2015 58 CPRE. The end of the road? Challenging the road-building consensus. 2017. 59 Sustrans. Evaluation of the Cycling City and Towns and the Cycling Demonstration Towns programmes. 2017. See also Sustrans’ Bike Life reports on other major UK cities. 60 Rage F & Saffrey A. The Value of Cycling. 2016. 61 TUC. Rebuilding after recession: a plan for jobs. 2020. 62 TNS (for VisitEngland, Visit Scotland & Visit Wales). Valuing Activities. 2015.

The potential

More than a third of the non-cycling population seems to be open to the possibility of cycling, agreeing that: ‘‘Many of the journeys of less than two miles that I now make by car I could just as easily cycle, if I had a bike.”63

If people really did convert these short driving trips to cycling, the impact on local motor traffic levels would be significant: almost a quarter of all car trips by drivers are under two miles which, even at only 6 mph on a bicycle, would only take 20 minutes.64

The appetite for more facilities for cycling is already significant: around three-quarters of people surveyed in twelve large British cities/city areas think that more cycle tracks along roads physically separated from motor traffic and pedestrians would be useful to help them cycle more, and over two-thirds support their construction even when this means less room for other road traffic.65

There is no shortage of bikes – in England alone, around 42% of people aged five and over have access to at least one.66 For those who don’t, bike recycling projects and public hire schemes are proliferating.

On top of that, non-standard machines and inclusive cycling programmes offer the experience of cycling to people who might not otherwise experience its joys, 67 while electric bikes are there for people who need a boost for some reason (health, hills, longer distances etc.). 68

63 DfT. National Travel Attitudes Study. Table NTAS0201e 64 DfT. National Travel Survey. Table NTS0308. 65 Sustrans. Bike Life UK report. 2019. 66 DfT. National Travel Survey (link above). Table NTS0608. Although this figure is for England, it’s reasonable to assume from earlier, GB-wide data, that it reflects the wider picture. The table now combines ‘own’ with ‘have access to’, but the table from earlier years used to separate them. These showed that the ‘owning’ figure was always around 40%, the ‘have access to’ figure around 1%. 67 See Wheels for Wellbeing, along with Cycling UK’s collection of material on inclusive cycling programmes 68 cyclinguk.org/cycling-advice/type-cycling/e-bikes

And, finally, we must decarbonise transport, and cycling is part of the solution. Cyclists have 84% lower lifecycle CO2 emissions from all daily travel than non-cyclists,69 so just imagine what would happen if we multiplied the number of cycle commuters by five, which would happen if people in England became as likely to cycle as people in The Netherlands70. We could also cut CO2 emissions in England by up to 50% by shifting from driving to ebikes.71

So, instead of being dragged down by the loud minority of anti-cycling naysayers, we should focus on the mass appeal cycling already has, what it’s already doing not just for our health, but for the environment and economy too AND how much more we could all benefit from it with positive thinking, positive attitudes, sound decision-making and, importantly, investment.

69 Brand C et al. The climate change mitigation effects of active travel. 2021. 70 CEDAR. England’s Cycling Potential. Feb 2017. 71 Philips, I et al. E-bike carbon savings – how much and where? 2020.