Transport for London: Baffling people with huge numbers

Does this man look trustworthy ?

Transport for London recently told the world that 2.5 million cycle journeys have been made on the "Barclays" London bike share bikes.

Instead of straightforwardly presenting data which shows the true extent of the usage of these bikes and puts it in a context which helps the reader to understand what the numbers mean, London has used a style of writing which often is used for projects like this. i.e. Trying to impress the reader by quoting what sound like huge numbers, and doing so without any context so that the meaning of it remains clouded. In this blog post, I explain what the numbers really mean.

What they say
In London's press release, you'll read of:

• Cycling to the moon and back 13 times in the first six months
• Covering more than 10,000,000 km
• Building on the massive 117% growth
• Making a huge contribution to the cycle revolution

Some context
However, let's look at those figures. Six months, 2.5 million journeys. The numbers sound great, but actually if you look closely at them you quickly see that this is not actually very impressive at all. This equates to 2.28 journeys per bicycle per day or less than a quarter of the estimated ten uses per bicycle per day that promoters used when selling this system.

London has a population of 8 M people. Between them, they make around 20 million journeys per day. If all the six months worth of shared bike journeys had been made on just one day (requiring each bike to be used an impossible 416 times), then even that would make up only 12% of total journeys in the city. However, actually it took half a year, 182 days, for this many journeys to be made. The total usage equates to only around 0.07% of the total journeys in the city. On average, Londoners are using these bikes not once per day, not once per week or once per month, but about once every 18 months. In fact, as each individual trip is being counted here, you could also say that this is the equivalent of the average Londoner going out and returning home again about once every three years by using these bikes.

So far, the scheme has cost 140 million pounds. The cost to Transport for London for each of the 2.5 million journeys made so far is £56 pounds. The hypothetical Londoner making their once per three year trip to the pub and back is subsidized to the tune of £112. Does that sound remotely like a reasonable or sustainable cost ?

Is this really deserving of the amount of hype which it receives ? It is deserving of comments from the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, such as 'The zest in which people have taken to two wheels and joined the cycling revolution we are engendering in the Capital has gladdened my heart.'. I'd love to see a genuine cycling revolution in London, and in Britain as a whole. However, let's please be realistic: this isn't the revolution you were looking for.

Back in March 2009 when I first wrote about the potential of the bike share scheme in London, I calculated that based on the promoters estimates of future use, it still had a maximum potential capacity of only 0.3% of the total journeys made in the city. Some people criticised me for pointing this out. However, actual usage has been under a quarter of what I wrote about.

Is this mass cycling ?
By way of contrast, a few days ago I ran a story about the amount of cycling in the Netherlands. The Netherlands has only twice the population of London, but there are over a million bike journeys an hour for the daytime hours of working days. That's more than 14 million journeys per day by bike, or 2.5 billion per six months. Let's state that in another way: The Dutch population is twice as large as London's population, but they're making a thousand times as many cycle journeys as the "Boris Bikes" are used for.

In fact, no shared bike scheme can ever possibly scale to cope with mass cycling. It would simply take too many bikes. What's more, as shown above, it can never introduce cycling as part of a regular habit to anything like the whole population of a city because the total capacity is so small for any affordable system (even a very expensive system)

Large bike share schemes are what cities install if they want to give off the appearance of being interested in cycling without investing in the infrastructural change which is necessary to make a real difference. There were already over a million bikes in London before the bike share was installed. People need safe and attractive conditions for cycling, not more bikes.

Of course, Londoners do actually ride other bikes as well. It's estimated that half a million cycle journeys are made every day in London on bikes other than bike-share bikes. These are far more significant numbers than the bike share bikes provide, in fact 36 times as large. What's more, this number has a far greater potential for growth than bike share does, as no-one wants to put 36 times as many of what are already the most expensive bikes in the world onto the streets of London.

You may also remember that a while back it was revealed that 84% of users already have their own bike and that almost half of users would otherwise ride their own bike. So, only half of the 2.5 million journeys over the last six months are actually new cycle journeys. To a large extent, the system is being used as a cheap to the user, but expensive to the tax payer, method of keeping existing cyclists bikes safe from vandalism and theft. Perhaps if London had spent some money on improving its inadequate cycle parking then this wouldn't be the case.

To bring about a genuine "cycling revolution in London, the environment must be made more conducive to cycling. People want to do it, but they need their local government to stop wasting vast amounts of money on silly things like bike share and invest properly in those things which have a proven history of success in promoting cycling.

Oh London...

There's a new report out describing the impact of the London "Superhighways" and Bike Hire schemes on transport in the city. This report comes from the London Assembly Transport Committee. It can't get more official than that.

Over the last couple of years, both these schemes in London have been accompanied by the most amazing amount of hype. Having seen what was proposed I was skeptical from the beginning about both the superhighways and the bike share scheme.

These projects were so wrong-headed that they could never achieve what the promoters said they could achieve. Some people criticised me for saying this. However, if you read the report yourself you can see how well it has all worked.

A few highlights:

Bike Share

The original wild estimates of 10 uses per cycle-hire bike per day (which I pointed out long ago were rather unlikely) have of course not been met. Actually each bike is used on average about three times per day.

In planning, they assumed a "5% shift from car to bike", defined not as a proportion of the modal share currently by car (the scheme could never get anywhere near that) but with rather an odd usage whereby they were talking about 5% of the trips on the bikes being by people who would otherwise have used a car. This would have worked out as a mere 3000 trips per day converted from car to hire bike. However, given the much lower actual usage of the bikes and that the conversion ratio from drivers is actually "less than 1%", the number of trips being made by bike instead of by car is actually under 150 per day. Even 3000 is trivial in the context of a city of eight million people.

TFL originally predicted that the largest shift would be from walking (34%), the second largest from buses (32%) and with 20% of users using the bikes as alternative to the tube. The tube figures are born out in reality (though note this is with a much lower level of usage in total, so it's nowhere near the estimated not the same absolute number) but only 8% of users would otherwise take the bus and 7% would otherwise walk. 1% are the afore-mentioned car users. Almost half of all users would otherwise use their own bikes. 84% of registered users of the scheme own their own bike.

Now if we take that 20% of riders who would otherwise take the tube, how much of an effect of "relieving capacity" might this have ? 20% of users amounts to about 3500 trips per day displaced from the tube to the bikes. However, London Underground boasts of around 1.2 billion trips per year. Do the maths and you find that the Boris Bikes have displaced just 0.1% of tube traffic.

Thus far, the city seems unsure how much sponsorship money they will get from Barclays. I'm not the only one who doesn't know what's going on with this - even the committee describes the funding as "opaque". The corporate advertising is splashed all over everything already, but how much Barclays will actually pay is still unknown.

The bike hire scheme has previously been reported as already being "self funding". This never stood up to any inspection, but now we've been given actual numbers to look at. In reality it doesn't seem to come close to doing this.

Of course, the same can also be said of almost any large government infrastructure scheme, so that's not a criticism in itself. However, it's also unclear as to why they say that the bike hire should pay for itself ? This is never a consideration when building roads.

I'll leave it to others to criticise the slow roll-out of the scheme and problems which have occurred with registration and use. Some problems are to be expected, and whether this is better or worse than any other big project of the British government is open to debate.

Currently the plan is to eventually have 6000 bikes and 400 docking sites, compared with the scheme in Paris which currently has 24000 bikes and 1750 sites. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, is quoted as saying that he wanted to overtake it, and that a London hire bike was a Rolls Royce compared to the Parisian "deux chevaux" [Citroen 2CV]. Those are words, not actions.

Superhighways

"60 per cent of respondents did not feel safer using the cycle superhighways and two-thirds did not feel they were respected by other road users." - hardly surprising given what they look like.

Users' comments:

• “The superhighways are not wide enough, stop abruptly at junctions and are extremely badly positioned on roads.”
• “I found the experience rather scary being sent from one side of the road to the other. I will not be doing it again.”
• “Just when you need them [cycle superhighways] - at major junctions, roundabouts and so on – they vanish. A novice cyclist, persuaded to venture out by the superhighways, is left high and dry just when they need most help.”

"The London Boroughs Cycling Officers’ Group has highlighted the importance of prioritising cyclists at junctions and getting rid of car parking over the cycle superhighways. Gina Harkell, the Vice-Chair of the Group, suggested it would be really nice if one of the cycle superhighways was “a truly dedicated route for cyclists such as those found in Holland, Germany and Denmark.”"

"Sustrans has highlighted that the greatest barrier to Londoners cycling, or cycling
more, is fear of traffic yet the cycle superhighways generally follow busy arterial roads and provide no or minimal segregation from traffic."

"All 12 cycle superhighways will be installed, as planned, by 2015." - does it really have to take this long ?

One user said: “I cycle to work along the Barclays cycle superhighway to work in the Barclays building in Canary Wharf where there is not enough cycle parking! Oh, the irony.”

Conclusion
The conclusion of their report is overall quite remarkably positive given what they've reported on.

Everyone would of course like to see cycling increase in London and around the rest of the UK, but even with the positive spin they conclude, as I do, that not nearly enough is being done to encourage people who don't cycle to want to cycle.

To achieve the target now set by the Mayor, the bike hire scheme needs to be used for 40000 trips per day and the superhighways need to be used for 120000 trips per day. London is a city of 8 million people. At a rate of 2.5 trips per day (this is fairly average worldwide) that means that Londoners currently make around 20 million trips per day. If the targets are met, and 160000 trips per day are converted into bike trips by the new schemes then they will have succeeded in a less than 1% modal share shift. However, that's not actually on the cards at all. Currently, only a fifth of hire bike users didn't already cycle in London. That makes for around extra 3000 trips per day. The survey also shows that the "superhighways" currently are used by 5000 people per day, of which only 1% are new cyclists. That's 50 people. If we generously assume they do all of their 2.5 trips per day, every day, by bike they add just 125 trips. Take these numbers and divide them into London's total number of trips by all modes and you find that the massive expenditure on hire bikes and superhighways has resulted in a modal shift of just 0.01%.

London needs a lot more than that.

The problem remains what it always was. A lack of subjective safety. If you want Dutch levels of cycling in London, you need people to feel as happy cycling in London as they do in the Netherlands. These schemes have come nowhere near providing this.

So far, London's initiatives have proven to be merely a very expensive demonstration showing what not to do if you want mass cycling.

Update the next day
There's some more analysis of numbers here

And to think that it's not that long ago that Dutch newspapers were getting worried that the Netherlands would lose its number one spot for cycling due to initiatives like this. They also believed the hype, that somehow this country would be overtaken. Thanks to Freewheeler for putting me on to this.

The most expensive bikes in the world ?

Cycling in the UK is on a very small scale. Under 2% of journeys in the country as a whole are made by bike. In the capital, London, the figure is also around 2% of journeys by bike.

London's new cycle hire scheme has provided 6000 bikes across sites in Central London. It's been widely reported as something which will transform cycling in London.

But is this really likely ? Can these bikes ever become the "tipping point" needed to kickstart London cycling ?

And what's more, is it good value for money ?

Rather prematurely, the scheme has been reported in some places as an instant success based on each bike being used about once per day. Initially, the promoters of the scheme in London claimed that the bikes would each be used ten times per day, though this has never happened on any other public bike share scheme. If every one of the bikes was used ten times per day, between them they would have adequate capacity for just 0.3% of journeys in the city. If each is ridden just once per day per bike you're talking about 0.03% of journeys by bike share bike. And these numbers only really count if everyone who rides the bike share bikes wouldn't otherwise cycle. If existing cyclists use the bikes then that has a neutral effect on the modal share. Does this look like a transformation ?

A shortage of bikes was never the reason for the low cycling rate of London. In fact, it's estimated that there are over a million bicycle owners in London. The Bike Hire bikes have increased the number of bikes in London by less than 1%. The problem is not a lack of bikes, but that Londoners in the main don't cycle because conditions for cycling in London, as with the rest of the UK, are terrible when you compare them with Dutch cities. Londoners are scared to cycle, and it's quite obvious why. This problem cannot be resolved by making fractionally more bikes available. It can only be addressed by making conditions for cyclists better. Spending a bit more on London's "superhighways" for bikes might have helped, as unfortunately those have been rather underfunded (around 20 million pounds / €24M / $31M) and they have been built to a very low standard.

We've touched on money, in that the Superhighways didn't get enough of it, so how much has London spent on the bike hire scheme ? Well, it's surprising. So far, the scheme has cost 140 million pounds (€170M / $220M) to put in place. That's over 23000 pounds (€28000 / $37000) per bike. A huge figure ! Given the specification, and the quantities bought, it's quite generous to say that the bikes themselves have cost around 500 pounds. That leaves around 22500 pounds worth of "overhead" per bike (46 times the value of the bikes themselves). Some of this will be due to such things as the docking stations and IT required to make the scheme work. However, there no doubt also a lot spent on such things as publicity, consultants to advise about the scheme and people to write lots of press-releases about how wonderful it all is (the considerable press that the scheme has attracted is a result of these). If the scheme is to expand outside the currently limited area that it covers, the costs will grow considerably, and the overheads will continue along with them. Even Transport For London can't provide an estimate of the cost of future expansion.

Later figures show that the operating costs for the scheme amount to an astonishing 2500 pounds per bike per year.

I might feel differently if bike share schemes had a proven track record of success in altering the modal share - but they do not have a track record of success. As a result, I find it hard to see how this can be regarded as good value for money - especially as it has consumed such a lot of funds which could have been used to build decent infrastructure for cycling.

There are other problems yet to be addressed. In Paris, almost every bike was either stolen or vandalized within two years and had to be replaced. Is this more or less likely to be a concern in London ?

Why did London look the long distance across the Atlantic to a nation where very few journeys are made by bike (the bike hire system comes from Canada, where 2% of journeys are by bike, just like in London) for inspiration about how to improve the cycling rate ? Why not instead look the short distance across the North Sea to the most successful example of a cycling nation here in the Netherlands ?

How much money is that?
Somehow people don't seem to realise how ludicrous the amount of money spent on London's bike share. Let's work it out as a number of other bikes that could have been bought and simply given away for the same money:

At retail prices, not asking for any discount at all, London's £140 million could have bought and given away 250 Pashleys every day, for a year, plus an additional 160 Bromptons every day for a year plus an additional 100 Bakfietsen every day for a whole year.

In total that would make another 190000 bikes on London's streets over the year of the giveaway. Nice ones, too, from good manufacturers. We're not skimping on quality with our hypothetical give-away.

That might sound like an impressive number, but it's less than a fifth of the number which people in London already own and don't use because they are scared to cycle on the streets. That's why it's the roads which need to be changed not the supply of bicycles increased.

This is one of the inexpensive bikes
referred to on the left. It has all
the essential features of a reliable
everyday bicycle

But those are really nice bikes. What about if we economise a little ? At the time of writing in the Netherlands, the very cheapest traditional bikes with mudguards and chainguard, of lower quality but similar in appearance to the Pashley in the photo above cost about €110 retail. That's about £70. The wholesale price is presumably somewhat lower, but if London had spent its £140M on these bikes at retail price it could have bought no fewer than 2 million bicycles to give away.

The bike shops wouldn't like the city to give them away, but the city could have worked with local bicycle shops, giving away vouchers for these bikes, perhaps also vouchers for servicing after six months or a year. It would surely have been better for London to support local businesses than a multinational from Canada.

It's fair to ask whether the free bicycles would find themselves unused in a shed, but each only has to be ridden an average of twice to beat the value for money of the bike share system in terms of rides per pound.


Central London is an ill-defined area with a population of around 1.5 million people, which rises considerably in daytime due to incoming workers. The total population for the city is around 8 million. If you're feeling charitable you can multiple the 0.3% maximum effect of London's bikes by 4 to get a little over 1% in just a part of the city. But this really is extremely optimistic. You have to believe that all the bikes work, that all are used ten times per day even though that's not happened yet in any bike share scheme (at a later date we found out that they were used only a quarter so often), and that all the users are people who wouldn't otherwise ride their own bikes.

If you need parts for a traditionally built bicycle then you're in luck. If you need parts for an unusual bicycle or to convert a less practical machine to be better for everyday use I can probably also help you. If you're looking for parts for an e-bike I certainly will help you if I can, but it may not be possible to find what you need. Please do ask, though.

Velib, Barclay's London Bike Hire and other public shared bike schemes

I can't be the only person who thinks there is an awful lot of wishful thinking involved in the way that bike sharing schemes are reported. I think a bit of realism is needed about the capability of such schemes.

I recently heard on the BBC news that London is to get 6000 shared bikes by 2010 and that the most optimistic estimates of their use say they will each be used 10 times a day. That's 60000 cycle trips per day (and is somewhat optimistic based on the take up of other shared bike schemes. update: as it turned out, London's bikes are actually used about a quarter so often so all my estimates below are actually wildly optimistic compared with real life).

This may sound impressive, but the greater London area has around 8 million residents. In most places, people make an average of around 2.5 "trips" by all modes each day, so that's around 20 million trips per day in total. If we assume that the bike hire scheme really does reach the number of trips that its proponents say, this means it has a capacity to replace one in 400 trips. 0.3% of the total. And that's the best case if they complete the scheme.

i.e. on average these bikes will account for just 0.002 trips per person per day.

That's tiny. Barely a start, in fact. Where people really cycle they use their bikes an awful lot more than that. For example, here in Assen the population make just short of 1.2 bike trips per day (the population of 65000 make over 70000 trips, more than the total capacity of the London scheme). Up in Groningen that grows to 1.4 bike trips per day. The Dutch, who are only twice as numerous as Londoners, make more than 14 million trips per day by bike. London's estimate of 60000 trips per day may impressive, but it's not. It's more than two orders of magnitude short of what is required (2011 update: actual usage has been under a third of what was predicted, but the hype continues unchecked).

It's great to see anything which encourages people to cycle. However, this scheme can never genuinely result in a large cycle culture. It can only ever be a small part of the picture.

It seems to me that public cycle hire is being picked on by many cities largely because it's the smallest thing can be done which will make it look as if something is being done. No longer do you need to do anything complicated and expensive like re-arranging the streets to make them more suited for cycling, or risk alienating motorists as you do it. Just allow a company to set up doing bike hire and the world's press will be amazed by your achievement.

How are other schemes doing ?
It's much the same picture in other places where these schemes have been introduced, even if there are far more bikes per inhabitant than are planned for London:

Barcelona has a population of 1.6M and 6000 bikes. They claim each one is used 10 times a day, so that's enough for 1.8% of journeys.

The Paris metropolitan area has 12M people, and there are 20000 bikes. Maximum capacity of Velib is therefore 0.8% of the journeys. What's more, the system in Paris is in trouble.


To see successful policy you really can't look for inspiration to nations where virtually no-one cycles. The country to look to is the Netherlands, where there is the highest rate of cycling in the world.

The Netherlands also has a public bicycle scheme called OV-Fiets. I previously covered the amusing promotional videos for the scheme. This has a different emphasis specifically targeting people who need bikes at the ends of journeys on public transport. (i.e. Exactly the opposite emphasis as London) and it is growing in popularity very quickly. But here also OV-Fiets can only cope with a very small proportion of total journeys.

November 2009 update
Can you believe that every one of the 20000 bikes provided in the Velib scheme in Paris has had to be replaced in the first two years ?

In other news, a comparative study of Bike Share schemes around the world showed that none were proven to be effective at increasing modal share.

Update July 2010
Since this post was written, Ve-Lon was renamed and implemented as the "Barclays Cycle Hire" system. It is no more ambitious than ever, and will still not provide for more than a tiny fractional increase in cycling in London. The fact remains that London already had plenty of bikes, and plenty of people who would like to cycle. The lack of decent infrastructure stood in their way and still stands in their way.

Further updates
Actual figures for usage in London have turned out to be much lower than predicted while costs are higher than predicted . My remark above that 10 rides per day was optimistic has proven to be right. It's closer to three in reality.

A later report from London pointed out that there's been no meaningful shift from car to bike and that a large proportion of total users are people who already rode bicycles in London. They use the shared bikes as insurance against their own bikes being stolen.

Nevertheless, London has continued to hype the figures for the bike share scheme though usage has now dropped to just over 2 rides per bike per day. i.e. less than a quarter of the optimistic estimates.

Regardless of this less than stellar success, other countries have gone ahead with their own bike share schemes rather than looking to the world's leading cycling nation and copying policies and infrastructure with proven success at increasing cycling modal share.

London's "Superhighways" are another example of not doing remotely enough.

Would you like to see true mass cycling for yourself ? Come on one of our Cycling Holidays or a Cycling Study Tour.