UK has almost nine million cyclists, claims report

I can't believe that swimming is more popular than cycling. I swim once a week with my kid (and rarely swim while I am there - usually I am a stood up shark) and while at the pool I reckon there are about 10-15 people on average actually swimming. On my drive to the pool I pass that many cyclists each way and obviously that is just on the roads I am on. Where are all these people swimming ?

I reckon that if anybody has a swim during the Summer holiday it is getting picked up in the statistics. I can believe that more people might swim than cycle during a year but the total participation in hours must be far less ?

I took this with a pinch of salt, but 20% of 9 million, is about 2 million.
The 40% of that does equate to the near million stated by other surveys for regular commuters.

most of whom are not in my neck of the woods. On a good day I nearly run out of fingers on both hands & that's over 15 miles.

We just need to convert the 60% of regular cyclists to transport, and then the other 6-7 million to riding more regularly.

So nearly 9 million cyclists and British Cycling are cheering and whooping they have 100k members

''the average participant cycling 48.9 times in the past year''

Is that 0.9 of a ride where you get a puncture a couple of miles out from home and you decide to just walk the last bit and fix it later - looks like we must all get one of those once a year - glad it's not just me

Unless anyone has some hard data to back this up I'd take it with a pinch of salt. I couldn't find a link on their own web-site but I did find the remarkable claim that:

"SPORTS MARKETING SURVEYS INC. (SMS INC.) announces the results of its groundbreaking International Participation Research into running across eleven markets, which reveals that the UK’s running population has reached an impressive 10.5million runners."

Which is pretty much the same % as they find for cyclists and kind of hard to square almost every other piece of research published recently concerning activity and obesity levels. However they kind of give the game away in the next paragraph ...

"The market-leading sports research company’s exclusive venture offers unrivaled insight into the UK running market in 2014, and has concluded that one in five adults run four or more times a year, while 25% of under-18s also qualify as active runners under these criteria"

If you can get past the cloyingly blunt tone of self-promotion you'll see it's a pretty low standard to beat. Being late for the 08.15 to Paddington a couple of days a year and you'd qualify as would anyone who'd ever tried assuming that the bus would never actually run ahead of time in the mornings.

I suspect the cycling data is similarly mis-leading. There's probably a very high percentage of people who have cycled a handful of times in a year. Anyone with kids will have been dragged along the local cycle trail a few times to ensure little Thomas doesn't take out someone else's grandmother with his new Christmas present. And then there's the odd bit of mountain biking on holiday - a quick whizz round the trail at Centre Parcs or some other similarly "safe" environment that might be enjoyable but bears absolutely no relation to actually using your bike as a means of transport or even exercise on UK public roads. None of this amounts to a cycling revolution and anyone who things it is does is deluding themselves (or has an agenda to promote). As someone else pointed out up-thread the modal figures for cycling remain stubbornly around 2% country-wide.

I find that final paragraph somewhat depressing. We need more cyclists displacing car journeys rather than golf clubs.

The problem is for every good cyclist there is an arsehole driving a motor vehcile with no regard for other users. For instance the idiot behind me this morning in his white van who was busy texting and picking his nose (a real rummage) whilst managing to squeeze in just about staying in lane. I was tempted to flick the brakes just to see if his reaction would result in his index finger being driven through the chicken sized brain in his head, but as there were other road users I thought better of it. People like him kill but the police are powerless to get them off the road.

How about at least putting out some hard hitting tv/radio adverts. How about "don't be a twat, keep the phone in your pocket"

curious, about the back ground to this, according to Strava I have been on 383 rides this year. obviously I commute so lots of two rides per day.

40% of survey commute yet the average is only 49 rides per year, not denying the numbers are what they are, just not completely sure what they are saying. one ride a week seems very low with that percentage claiming to commute. And the final line about 2% of journeys when c8% claim to commute/transport, (40% of 16.9%) all seems a bit of creativity from responders.

You would have thought that with that many riding you would see more cyclists on the roads. I hardy see anyone when out except when I am in central Cambridge which is a cycling hotspot. I suspect the criteria to qualify as a "cyclist" were not that difficult to meet even if you just sat on a bike and didn't go anywhere. How were people's responses checked? You could say anything to exaggerate your cycling, well, almost anything.

What we need is for more people to cycle for their commute and as part of their daily routine.