{"id":163454,"date":"2025-09-27T09:05:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T09:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/163454\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T09:05:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T09:05:13","slug":"in-the-aftermath-of-tube-strike-chaos-28-of-londoners-say-they-are-now-more-likely-to-cycle-in-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/163454\/","title":{"rendered":"In the aftermath of tube strike chaos, 28% of Londoners say they are now more likely to cycle in future"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than a\u00a0quarter of Londoners say they are now more likely to cycle following the recent Tube strike disruption.<\/p>\n

As large parts of the London Underground were closed for five days at the start of September, cycling journeys and hire bike use soared with images of packed cycle lanes making news stories and attracting plenty of attention online.<\/p>\n

\"CyclistsCyclists in London during Tube strike (credit: Joshua Garfield)<\/p>\n

New data from Lime and YouGov,\u00a0shared with The Standard<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0the result of a survey of 1,027 Londoners, found that 28 per cent of people are now more likely to consider cycling in the future.<\/p>\n

>\u00a0Stranded by Tube strikes? Try one of these London cycling routes instead<\/a><\/p>\n

Electric hire bike provider Lime said its bikes’ usage was up 74 per cent by the Wednesday of strike week, rising steadily through the first few days as more people turned to their e-bikes to get to work. Average trip duration and length were also up by more than a third.<\/p>\n

Of those surveyed, 21 per cent said they had cycled during the strike, the even greater 28 per cent headline figure suggesting that the week of Underground closures and booming bike use has also turned the heads of some who did not use bikes that week.<\/p>\n

\"CyclistsCyclists in London during Tube strike (credit: Adam Tranter)<\/p>\n

Lime’s public affairs manager Alice Pleasant said the massive surge in cycled journeys showed “just how far London has come as a cycling city”. Likewise, another electric hire bike provider Forest admitted that the increased demand had “exceeded our expectations”, even if it some level of spike in use was anticipated.<\/p>\n

\"CyclistCyclist in London riding Lime bike (credit: Simon MacMichael)<\/p>\n

Alex Berwin from Forest said: “For many the strikes turned out to be an opportunity to try cycling and travel to work in ways that are more affordable, accessible and sustainable. Thousands of people chose to travel by bike \u2014\u00a0with many trying a Forest bike for the first time.”<\/p>\n

\"ForestForest bike (credit: Richard Pearce)<\/p>\n

“One in five Londoners said they cycled during the strike, showing cycling is now a standard part of how we move around the city,” Alice Pleasant from Lime added. “During the strike, morning cycling trips rose by up to 74 per cent compared to early September.\u00a0Average trip distance and duration also increased more as the week went on. This shift points to a growing level of confidence in cycling as a reliable, accessible, efficient way to get from A to B.”<\/p>\n

Forest said its data shows that many first time riders will continue to cycle in future, “supporting the wider shift we\u2019re seeing to two wheels”.<\/p>\n

\"LimeLime and Human Forest bikes lined up in the hire bay (credit: Islington Council)<\/p>\n

“It’s clear that the strike spike wasn’t a one off,” Forest’s head of policy said.<\/p>\n

The study on more Londoners being more likely to consider cycling in future comes as the original London bike hire service\u00a0Santander Cycles<\/a> (rebranded from the Boris and Barclays days<\/a>) will be sticking around under the bike’s sponsorship for at least the next seven years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"SantanderSantander Cycles photography competition (credit: Transport for London)<\/p>\n

>\u00a0Santander renews London hire bike sponsorship to 2032, pledges further investment<\/a><\/p>\n

Santander has renewed sponsorship until 2032, more than 6.1 million journeys made on the bikes so far this year.<\/p>\n

Commuting bike specialists Quella<\/a>\u00a0this afternoon told us the Tube strike\u00a0“saw a surge in searches for commuter bikes during the disruption, with interest in single-speed commuter bikes up over 1,000 per cent\u00a0in Google searches and traffic to our own site more than doubling for models such as our Edinburgh e-bike and Nero Classic.”<\/p>\n

Quella’s general manager Josh Hale said: “It\u2019s no surprise: when the trains stop, people still need to get to work. Cycling offers a faster, more reliable, and more affordable way of travelling, particularly as rail fares continue to rise. With Cycle to Work schemes bringing the cost of a quality bike down to less than a monthly travel card, more commuters are recognising cycling as a practical long-term choice, not just a back-up during strikes.”<\/p>\n

Tom Fyans, the\u00a0CEO the London Cycling Campaign told The Standard the Tube strikes “demonstrated the power of cycling to move people around our city safely” and called on policy makers to take this even further.<\/p>\n

“The incredible convenience of dockless hire, the huge untapped potential as a safe, healthy transport mode that remains unfulfilled for cycling in London \u2014\u00a0with too many areas still deprived of truly safe, comfortable cycle routes, and the desperate need for more cycle capacity our routes already face.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor more of those one in four Londoners who want to cycle more to keep pedalling, we’ll need a lot more cycle tracks, crossings, and routes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than a\u00a0quarter of Londoners say they are now more likely to cycle following the recent Tube strike…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-163454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}