Ever since the British team’s success on the velodrome at the 2008 Olympics, campaigners and government ministers have confidently predicted that Britain is on the verge of becoming a nation of cyclists. There’s just one problem: For the most part, it hasn’t happened.
Apart from a very concentrated increase in cycle use during Covid, the level of cycle travel in England has remained broadly stable for years, and things do not appear to be changing.
In December, Brompton recorded the lowest annual sales of its eponymous folding bikes since 2021. Statistics from the Bicycle Association, the trade body for Britain’s bicycle industry, show that in 2024 fewer conventional bikes were purchased than in any other year this century.
“If you look at pedal bike sales since 2010, there’s no year, except for the year of Covid, where sales haven’t declined. I’m still perplexed that people in the industry aren’t more alarmed about this,” says Phillip Darnton, executive president of the Bicycle Association.
It is not, however, a completely gloomy picture. London is experiencing a sustained boom in cycling, now with almost 1.5 million trips per day, 43% more than in 2019. A handful of other places have seen an increase in bike use, albeit less dramatically.
Behind this jumble of statistics lie some obvious lessons. To find them, we first need to think about the different types of cyclists on our roads.
Recreational cyclists – the legendary middle-aged pedalers who wind through the Surrey hills or the Peak District in DayGlo Lycra, rain or shine – may only represent a small part of what makes a cycling nation.
Others include those who cycle every day to get around, and experts agree that these people will only cycle if they feel it is safe, which requires long-term investment in infrastructure. Finally, with the advent of e-bikes and dockless rental networks such as Lime, cycling is changing rapidly – but some say the government is not yet keeping pace.
Adam Tranter, who runs a PR agency that works with cycling brands and was previously the Walking and Cycling Commissioner for the West Midlands, points to the gradual shift in high-end bike sales from traditional road bikes to so-called gravel bikes, designed for use off-road, and sophisticated indoor trainers, where people race against each other virtually.
“This is all code for people who say, ‘I don’t like being around cars because I don’t feel safe,’” he says. “No matter how you look at it, you can’t reach the potential of cycling without making it much safer and more welcoming. It all comes down to this basic fact.”
While Westminster governments have oscillated between relative enthusiasm for cycling under Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer and the transport culture wars and conspiracies of Rishi Sunak, by contrast, London has seen more than two decades of support under the mayors of Ken Livingstone, Johnson and then Sadiq Khan.
“For things to really change, there needs to be strong and consistent political leadership over an extended period of time,” says a senior figure in the world of cyclical politics. “If you have consistent investment, you can also attract and retain the talent and skills you need to make cycling work in a place as old and as populated as London. These people are not easy to find.”
Of course, London also has a concentrated population and disincentives to driving, including the congestion charge and a network of low-traffic neighborhoods in many boroughs.
As anyone who has recently visited London knows, as well as growing in size, the swarms of cyclists are also changing in type, including more and more people using e-bikes, including rental versions such as the ubiquitous Lime models.
Within it are a distinct breed of machines: often surprisingly fast electric contraptions, powered by vast motors in the rear-wheel hubs and a collection of zipped batteries, many of which are piloted by gig-economy passengers for delivery companies. These are not electric bikes strictly defined by law. It is in fact a form of electric motorcycle, completely illegal but rarely contested by the police.
“It’s a huge image problem for cycling, because more or less everyone confuses the two things,” says Tranter. “We could tackle this problem more or less overnight by forcing delivery companies to carry out controls, for example by monitoring the speed of travelers. But it seems we prefer to complain.”
This new technological world is leading to a decline in sales of conventional bicycles across Europe. The difference is that in many other countries the balance is offset by the sale of legal e-bikes.
Darnton says: “This year, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Spain alone will sell more than 5 million e-bikes. We might be lucky if we sell 150,000 here.”
This is largely due to other countries having safer road conditions for cycling, as well as grants to help people buy sometimes expensive electric bikes, the type of scheme until now only applied to electric cars and motorbikes in the UK.
But beyond that, e-bikes have something of an image problem, shaped by a mix of personal experiences and media coverage.
Tranter says: “When it comes to rental bikes, the problem is mainly their popularity – as the numbers increase, so do the number of idiots, as with any other mode of transport. But we have come to see their popularity as a problem to be solved and not as a great achievement for active mobility.”
Added to this is the almost uncontrolled use of illegal e-bikes, many of which are made in China, which are often dangerously fast and, unlike legal models, can have alarmingly combustible batteries.
Darnton says: “People read that e-bikes are dangerous and they believe it. And if your landlord says you can’t take it on the property, or if your employer says you can’t park it in the underground parking lot, which is increasingly the case, then you won’t get one.”
“In London, if you ask anyone under 35 if they are considering buying a bike, they will say: ‘Why? I have one at the end of the street.”
He adds: “Existential is that rather terrible word, but it’s true: unless we can do what Europe is doing, what’s going to happen to the British bicycle market is that it will become a leisure market, like golf, tennis, badminton or whatever. »
