Cycling in 2023 Down 7% on Previous Year
Cycling was down in 2023 compared with the previous year, according to DfT road traffic estimates.
Distance cycled in 2023 was 3.6 billion miles, which is 7.3% less than in 2022 but broadly similar (-0.4%) to pre-pandemic levels represented by 2019.
The figures are based on 8,000 12-hour manual counts at the roadside, and continuous data from automatic traffic counters. As a result, only cycling on or adjacent to roads is counted, not on greenways or other paths away from roads.
Mileage by Vehicle Type
(‘PC’ on the chart means pedal cycle).
Comparing 2023 with 2022 for all vehicle types:
- cars were +3%
- vans were +0.5%
- lorries were -2.5%
- motorcycles were +0.5%
- buses and coaches were -1.7%
- pedal cycles were -7.3%
Cars
The 2023 road traffic estimates show cars doing more miles on Britain’s roads than any other vehicle type. They represent 76% of all distance travelled. Vans are next, at 17%.
Car traffic increased by 3% in 2023 as compared with 2022, to reach 251.3 billion miles. Car miles have not yet returned to the pre-pandemic levels of 2019.
More car miles are done on A-roads (44% of the total) than on any other type of road.
Vans
There has been a significant increase in van traffic over 10 years. Distance travelled reached 57.8 billion miles in 2023.
Buses and Coaches
Bus and coach miles have not fully recovered after the pandemic, and are down in 2023 compared with 2022.
Yorkshire and the Humber
The DfT also publishes information by region.
In Yorkshire and the Humber traffic is increasing, reaching 27.9 billion miles in 2023.
York and North Yorkshire
The DfT also publishes information by local authority area. It says that traffic data at local authority level are not as robust as the national figures due to sample size of the minor road data.
Traffic is increasing in North Yorkshire, and reached 5.38 billion miles in 2023 (see the chart above).
In York, traffic is also increasing (see chart below).
Miles travelled reached 0.82 billion in York in 2023.
Carbon Reduction Pathway
The York & North Yorkshire region has targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transport. They are set out in the Routemap to Carbon Negative, which is based on the Emissions Reduction Pathways.
The targets require a reduction in vehicle miles travelled, and increases in distance walked and cycled.
Instead, vehicle miles travelled are going up, and distance cycled is going down. This information is given in the DfT datasets.
Dataset 8901 gives vehicle miles by local authority. These are the figures for York and North Yorkshire in billion vehicle miles.
| Local Authority | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
| North Yorkshire | 4.425 | 4.950 (+11.9%) | 5.301 (+7.1%) | 5.385 (+1.6%) |
| York | 0.665 | 0.739 (+11.1%) | 0.804 (+8.8%) | 0.823 (+2.4%) |
Pedal cycle miles by region are in dataset 0403.
For Yorkshire & the Humber (excluding South and West Yorkshire), they are:
- 2020 0.4 billion miles
- 2021 0.2 billion miles
- 2022 0.2 billion miles
- 2023 0.2 billion miles