The small rise in cycling would have happened anyway

The National Cycling Strategy produced in the 1990s aimed for a quadrupling of levels of cycling throughout England and Wales by 2012, which would have meant at least twice as many people cycling in London as there are now over the next two years.

So much for a “revolution”. But it gets worse: why has the increase taken place? Officially, it is because of the efforts of Transport for London and the London Boroughs (mainly funded by TfL). But there is a more likely reason for at least a large proportion of the increase.

It is one which occurs in road safety and elsewhere where professionals claim credit for changes. Known as “regression-to-mean”, it refers to a change which was due to happen anyway. With cycling modal share, we can point to a typical “underlying average” in northern European cities, including those which have not supported cycling, of some 5%. What has happened in London can at least largely be explained by a spontaneous return to this average.

Of course, some interventions have had some benefits, and the increase in cycling can be traced back to the concern around higher costs of running cars around the introduction of the congestion charge. Nevertheless, a large part of the increase in cycling can be seen as spontaneous and not due to official agencies like TfL and London’s Boroughs.