Ahh, the Old Street roundabout. They could always tear down the building to make more room for an extended bike lane - a bike lane that will go unused for at least 5 months a year due to winter?. That would keep the cycling lobby happy - if only for a few minutes?.

Presumably Toronto has similar weather dependant cycling participation as London. Which in turn raises the question, why build cycling infrastrucutre if it's going to be empty for at least 4-5 months a year?

Interestingly, in Australia, much the opposite tends to happen. It gets so hot during an Australian summer many cycling advocates believe office buildings need to provide "end of trip facilities" which will alow cyclists to have a shower before going upstairs to their office.

More evidence from the UK Dept of Transport whichs shows just how much cycling in England depends on good weather. Every winter cycling participation falls dramatically until the next summer. That means bike lanes in London are mostly empty for 6 months a year.

An Australian cyclist recently made a complaint to police about an incident he describes as ‘an extremely dangerous close pass’. However, the police stated he brought the problem on himself by attempting to impede the path of a passing truck.

Hands up if you've ever been cornered by a cyclist just like this guy?. Wow. that's a LOT of hands!

From London to New York to Paris to Melbourne. it's the question normal people keep asking everywhere. Why are so many cycling lobbyists such terrible cyber stalkers?.

One thing's for sure. The very last reason reason we make roads is so that 3 guys going though a middle age crisis can have a chat while riding their bikes.

In closing, cycling lobbies around the world keep trying to sell cycling as a solution to ever increasing population density. But how are we winning when we constrict traffic flow more and more for a niche audience which only uses thir bit of road system in fine weather?

Serious cycling injuries are also stratospheric, as evidenced by this data from Australia. In both The Netherlands and Australia, huge numbers of cyclists present themselves to hospitals with serious injuries after being involved in single vehicle crashes.

But what about The Netherlands, you hear cyclists say?. Well, the first thing you should know is (relative the England) huge numbers of cyclists die in The Netherlands. Easily twice as many as England with just one third the population.

When we cannibalise scarce road space and set it aside for cyclists, essentially we're creating a permanent solution to a seasonal problem. In the dead of winter we see wide empty bike lanes prohibited to other road users but those sections of road go unused regardless.

And thus we can see why cycling is a poor bet when it comes to solving London's traffic congestion crisis. The bottom line is London has a very high population density. Ultimately THAT is what causes traffic congestion rather than the form of transport being used.

Moving forward to the summer of 2022 and we've had extraordinary weather conditions. Clearly, cycling is highly seasonal and further, it's adversely affected by poor weather even in summer time. It's not a real world mass transit solution.

During the winter of 2020-2021 things changed. And as you can see, during winter cycling falls off a cliff. Even when the summer of 2021 arrived, numbers were still smaller than the highest points during the May lockdowns of 2020. (Continued).

Looking at the graph we can see the beginning of the pandemic panic period when people stopped going to work in huge numbers. The roads were empty, people were stuck at home, so people started riding bikes for recreation. Refer to May 2020. (continued).

What we've done is we've excluded weekends from the data, and we've average the data for each week Mon-Fri and we've quoted the weekly average as the data point on the timeline. Doing this allows us to filter out wild spikes. (Continued).

The data is obtained from the UK Department of Transport. You can visit the source here, at this link.

What we'll be analysing in this thread is why investment into cycling infrastructure is ultimately a very poor bet compared to other forms of mass transport. Firstly, the data. We're looking at cycling participation across England between March 1st 2020 and Sep 5th 2022.

It doesn't matter how much London's cycling lobby claims "the lack" of segregated cycling infrastructure is why cycling hasn't solved London's traffic crisis. The problem isn't infrastructure. The reality is most people only ride bikes in fine weather.