For years, urban cycling advocates have argued that if cities make cycling easier, safer and more convenient, people will ride. New data from the City of London offers some of the strongest evidence yet that this shift is already underway. In a milestone that would have seemed improbable just a generation ago, bicycles now outnumber […]
For years, urban cycling advocates have argued that if cities make cycling easier, safer and more convenient, people will ride. New data from the City of London offers some of the strongest evidence yet that this shift is already underway. In a milestone that would have seemed improbable just a generation ago, bicycles now outnumber motor vehicles on many of the city’s streets during daytime hours.
The transformation has been driven in large part by the explosive growth of shared e-bikes, which have made cycling accessible to a much wider range of people. At the same time, cargo bikes are becoming increasingly common, while the number of private automobiles entering the city centre continues to decline. The trend mirrors what many urban planners and transportation experts are seeing in cities around the world: when safe infrastructure, bike-share systems and supportive policies come together, more people choose two wheels over four.
“The number of people cycling in the City overtook the number of motor vehicles for the first time,” read the report.
The City Where Bikes Now Outnumber Cars
For more than a century, the City of London was engineered around one dominant assumption: that mobility meant motors, namely cars and trucks. Even when the streets were ridiculously narrow, the volumes too high, and the grid too old for the scale of modern commuting, the system bent itself around the car, the taxi, and the bus. But by the summer of 2025, that assumption had quietly been overturned. Without a single defining moment, the City had crossed a threshold where the majority of movement was no longer powered by engines at all.