Talk about biking in London, and you’ll often hear the glum mantra that London isn’t Amsterdam — it’ll never be a biking mecca. But, heck, London’s actually doing pretty well. According to a new report from the city’s transportation agency, Transport for London, bikes account for 24 percent of rush hour traffic — in other words, on a weekday morning or evening, 1 out of every 4 vehicles on the road is a bike.
Here’s what that looks like:
Some roads are even more overrun by cyclists, The Guardian reports:
The numbers on some headline routes are perhaps not surprising to anyone who has squashed in with scores of cyclists at the traffic lights in London’s morning rush hour, though they do make previous cycling targets look shamefully unambitious.
At Theobalds Road near Holborn, bikes were 64% of all vehicles heading west, while Elephant and Castle, one of London’s most notoriously frightening roundabouts for cyclists (which Boris Johnson once said was “fine” for cyclists) saw 903 cyclists per hour head north to the city centre between 7am and 9am.
Maybe that mantra needs a more optimistic spin. London isn’t Amsterdam — yet.
