DfT's new Cycling Index

This report has been updated 5 oct 2023.

UK Dept for Transport has started publishing a monthly Cycling Index for England, see https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/cycling-index-england. It is based on automatic counters. There is no indication so far as to which counters and how they will adjust for the uneven geographcal spread of cycle counters. Let us hoppe they are not depending on the vehicle counters embedded in many main roads as these are not acurate for bicycles.

The data looks nice and broadly fits with the daily Covid data (now stopped).

Note odd shape of the Covid surge is due to 12 month averaging. Looks as though cycling is still falling  after the peak early in the pandemic. Is now pretty much the same as immediately pre-Covid and is below the trend line of rising cycling present in the 2012-2019 data.  In the previous DfT Covid data and my own there is a marked difference betweenn weekday and weekend cycling. Weekday cycing has finally reached pre-Covid levels, presumably because, although significant nnumbers are still working from home, cycing has increased. Weekend cycing is way up in my Inner London data. If you combine my weekday and weekend data, there is about 30% increase over pre Covid.

Will contact the DfT and see if they can provide a breakdown of the Index by day of week. Be nice to have time of day data too.  And to see if they can give me some regional data, especially for Inner London.

Note for me: Analysis and images at C:\Cycling\Cycling Stats\DFT_Cycling_Index; image at \Cyc_Index_jun23.png