The planning of cycle routes in London has often been based on the principle of looking for 'quiet' roads. Too often, these are on quiet backstreets which are probably quiet because of their indirectness. This seems a bad principle. The post-2015 Cycle Superhighways are based on the much-better principle of building segregated cycle lanes on strategic roads that provide direct origin-to-destination links. When it can be done this is surely the right thing to do.
To avoid spending money on unpopular cycle facilities data on cycle flows is necessary. An opportunity to see what routes cyclists use has come from the Strava Metro Global Heatmap. The problem with this data is that comes only from users of the Strava App. They tend to be young and young-at-heart male cyclists with a zest for competition. I have read that they may be 10% of all commuter cyclists which would be a good-sized sample if not a representative sample. So I'd like to ask forum members to have a look at the Strava map for their local area and comment on whether it seems to be a fair representation of cyclists' route preferences.
Here is a blog post which uses Strava data to comment on the intended location of the £65m Brunel Bike Bridge in East London. It was approved by Mayor Sadiq Khan in October 2016. It would be a pity if it was not built in the best location and it seems obvious that the location should be decided with reference to accurate historic data on cycle movement patterns. Is Rotherhithe the best place for the Brunel Bike Bridge? The bridge location was a Sustrans’ idea, not a TfL idea.
Tfl collects some cycling data with its (inevitably limited) cycle census operations by observers on street corners. The DT has sponsored a Potential to Cycle PCT tool which uses data from the 2011 national census and assigns it to cycle routes shown on the Openstreetmap. The tool was designed to assess potential, not for route selection.
