In two earlier requests, your reference 0253-1718 and FOI-0397-1819/GH I asked for access to your cycle count data. I understand you continue to collect this data, and are sharing some details of it privately with journalists. Can you provide to me: 1) Any presentations from the past year on cycling monitoring. 2) The most recent report summarising the latest quarterly cycle count results 3) An excel file (zip) with the results from cycle counts including detailed data per site, direction and 15 minute time periods since Q4 2013, with accompanying details of the location of each count. As this is a third similar request, I would note that I still believe that this is data you should be finding a way to share as open data under your transparency policy, as it would aid public understanding and developers.

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Our ref: FOI-1245-1920/GH

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 25 July 2019 asking for cycle count data.

Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy. I can confirm that we do hold some of the information you require.

1. Any presentations from the past year on cycling monitoring.

    

   There have not been any presentations on cycle monitoring produced in the last year.

    

2. The most recent report summarising the latest quarterly cycle count results

    

   The latest quarterly update is published on TfL’s quarterly performance report, which is available here:

    

   https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/quarterly-progress-reports

    

3. An excel file (zip) with the results from cycle counts including detailed data per site, direction and 15 minute time periods since Q4 2013, with accompanying details of the location of each count.

Due to the size of these files, they have been sent to you on CD.

The central, inner and outer London counts aim to provide a strategic overview of cycling across London and use a constant panel of sites that is counted every year:

• The central London quarterly counts are representative of their nominal quarter.
• The inner and outer London annual counts are representative of the spring/summer season in their nominal year, which approximately matches financial quarter 2 (April to June).

The counts along the routes on each of the legacy investment programmes (Cycle Superhighways, Quietways, Mini-Hollands, Central London Grid) are aimed at assessing changes before and after the delivery of cycling improvements.

There are two monitoring windows for these counts: spring and autumn. The raw data are representative of their nominal season (never specific to a certain date), but the preferred metric is the ‘annual equivalent’, which corrects for the seasonal variations and represents an annual average that is comparable across sites, programmes, and years. Both of these are provided in the data tables.

The sites along each route are counted at most once per year (they are skipped if the route is under construction), and always in the same season. Traditionally, Cycle Superhighways, the earlier Quietways and Central London Grid have been counted in autumn, while Mini-Hollands and later Quietways have been counted in spring. However, this distinction has blurred in more recent years, but always keeping consistency within each individual route. Details on the nominal count windows by site are provided in the data tables.

In the earlier years of the programme, counts on every site were repeated annually. In more recent years, however, counts have been more selective and have strived to avoid the construction period on each route and to collect baseline data as close as possible to the beginning of the construction works. For this reason, a lot of the data (particularly the earlier data) may be made of old, redundant baselines or ‘invalid’ counts during construction.

Please also note that these are 16-h counts on a ‘typical’ day in the season. However, day-to-day variability of cycling demand is known to be quite large and therefore the variations at lower levels of disaggregation and across the years must be treated with circumspection. Furthermore, these variations have a disproportionately high impact when the absolute cycling volumes are low, which is the case on a lot of baseline counts and on quieter routes.

If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for some reason, please do not hesitate to contact me.

If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Graham Hurt

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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