Spokes Traffic Count May 2025: new post-covid bike % record!

Our regular May traffic count, at Lothian Road and Forrest Road, found bikes forming the highest proportion of all vehicles so far post-covid.

The 8-9am increase to 16.7%, from 16.3% in 2024, was marginal, with both car and bike numbers rising somewhat. However, at lunchtime (12.30-13.30) the bike percentage was up from 10.2% to 11.1%, with car numbers falling – indeed, for the first time ever there were fewer private cars than the bus/taxi/van total, our ‘commercial’ category.

At Forrest Road northbound, bikes formed a remarkable 26.9% of all vehicles between 8 and 9a.m. – our highest post-covid figure so far at any count point.

As we have seen in the last couple of years, the modest improvements in bike numbers at our count locations (where cycling infrastructure has not yet been installed or improved) contrast strongly with hugely impressive rises where segregated infrastructure has recently been built, notably the Cycling Scotland data for CCWEL and at Picardy Place. More on this below.

• For full data from our May 13 count, see the ‘Resources’ section below
• A parallel count was conducted by Spokes Porty, with fairly similar results to the central area – see below

Overall results, Lothian Road + Forrest Road

The overall picture since our post-covid counts began is of increasing bike use (particularly a.m.), increasing ‘commercial’ (particularly lunchtimes) and falling car use (particularly lunchtimes). Detailed numbers are in the table below.

Totals at Lothian Rd & Forrest Rd northbound+southbound, 8-9am	May 2021	May 2022	May 2023	May 2024	May 2025
Bikes	217	310	414	374	396
Commercial (bus, taxi, van, etc)	706	728	730	699	712
Private car	1507	1403	1397	1227	1269
Bikes as % of total traffic	8.9%	12.7%	16.3%	16.3%	16.7%
% of cars which are single-occupant	76.4%	77.7%	77.0%	74.3%	77.1%
northbound+southbound 1230-1330
Bikes	no count	178	208	184	198
Commercial (bus, taxi, van, etc)		718	713	788	813
Private car		1041	1012	839	779
Bikes as % of total traffic		9.2%	10.8%	10.2%	11.1%
% of cars which are single-occupant		70.1%	70.3%	67.0%	71.6%

Of course, our counts are just snapshots on one day. However, to maximise comparability, we always use the same day of the week, a Tuesday, the same time of year and the same locations.

Lothian Rd v Forrest Rd

There was a marked contrast in the 8-9a.m. count, with bike numbers falling slightly and car numbers rising significantly (both northbound and southbound) at Lothian Road; whereas the exact opposite was the case at Forrest Road. The combined effect being the aforementioned marginal rise in bikes as a percentage of all vehicles, to 16.7%, from 16.3% last May, totalling all 4 count points.

Lunchtimes showed more similarity between the two roads, with car numbers down from last year at all 4 count points, and bike numbers fairly static apart from a significant rise northbound at Lothian Road.

LEZ impacts ?

Our 4 count points all fall within the LEZ boundary. Enforcement and fines began on 1 June 2024, although the LEZ had been in effect on a ‘voluntary’ basis, with signage and publicity, for a year before that. So by the time of our May 2024 count, many drivers wishing to avoid the LEZ were probably already doing so.

Although the LEZ intention is to reduce pollution, politicians had suggested it might also reduce car traffic somewhat. Our figures do indeed suggest a reduction in private car use of between 10% and 20% as between May 2023 and May 2024. The new traffic levels appear to have stayed roughtly in that new range this year, with a private car rise of 3% in the morning and a fall of 6% at lunchtime. Interestingly, our Porty count figures (below) showed a slight rise in car numbers between May 2023 and 2024, again suggesting that the fall in the central area may have been an LEZ impact.

The one puzzling factor is that although LEZ-area car numbers fell by 10%-20% between 2023 and 2024, bike numbers also fell (by around 10%). And at the same time, as with cars, bike numbers rose in Porty.

Cars v Bus/Taxi

The fact of bus/taxi/van numbers overtaking car numbers at lunchtime, for the first time ever in our traffic counts, is particulary interesting!

Of course, since our figures include vans as well as bus/taxi, one can only speculate, but they do suggest a degree of modal shift from car to bus and taxi, as well as bike, between 2024 and 2025. That this is not an LEZ effect is suggested by the Porty figures (below), which also show car numbers down whilst bikes are up modestly and ‘commercial’ is up substantially.

Single Occupancy

Once again, more than three-quarters of 8-9a.m. citybound cars contained only one person, as did over 70% at lunchtime. Single-occupancy means a huge area of valuable streetspace occupied to move just one person, though even a full car is of course space-inefficient compared to bus, bike or walk.

An interesting point is the number of people travelling solo citybound in the rush hour. We estimate, at our count points, this was around 855 people (282 by bike; ~573 alone in a car) so cyclists comprised 33% of those travelling solo, whilst occupying a far lower proportion of roadspace. Allocating a relatively small width of the roadspace to a segregated bike route should encourage many more of these space-efficient machines, as is now happening at CCWEL and Picardy Place.

Comparisons with CCWEL and the Picardy Place Omni separated bike path

Publicly available data from Cycling Scotland has shown remarkable growth in bike use on roads in Edinburgh and Glasgow where segregated facilities of significant length have been built.

A Cycling Scotland video survey of Edinburgh’s CCWEL saw an 83% rise in bike use in its first 9 months of operation. Automatic counter data on the Edinburgh-Leith segregated path outside Omni Centre, graphed by Edward Tissiman, shows ongoing substantial increases from 2021 to 2024 as connections grew – Leith St bike lane, Leith Walk, York Place, and Picardy toucan crossings.

Comparisons between these surveys and our one-day, one-hour snapshot counts cannot be definitive. However, it is hard not to conclude that the facts of separated bike routes, and the growing network aspect, are primary reasons why bike increases at such routes far outstrip those in our traffic counts on roads which, despite being important corridors, still have no or minimal bike facilities.

Portobello count

Spokes Porty does a traffic count in Brighton Place at the same times as our City Centre counts. See ‘Resources’ below for the full data.

With much lower numbers than the central area counts, combining the morning and lunchtime figures, as in the table here, should give totals somewhat less susceptible to random fluctuation.

Brighton Place totals 8-9am + 1230-1330	May 23	Nov 23	May 24	May 25
Bikes	75	70	84	94
Commercial (includes bus, taxi, van)	185	189	165	220
Cars	600	598	642	610
Bike % of all vehicles	8.7%	8.2%	9.4%	10.2%

Generally, the figures have much similarity to our city centre count, with bikes and commercial vehicles up and cars, overall, down, as compared to May 2024..

At Porty, the above changes were particularly marked in the 8-9am period, with bikes increasing from 60 to 76, up from 12.4% of vehicles in 2024 to 15.7% this year. Lunchtime showed a fall in the bike % from 2024, but the low lunchtime bike numbers (down from 24 to 18) mean that random fluctuations can loom large and render the % figure less reliable.

Resources …

• Our Bluesky post of this article – please repost!
• Full count data are here. See also our count data page for earlier surveys and a trends file
• The reports on our previous two counts, November 2024 are here and May 2024 here
• Covid brought major changes in commuting patterns, as many people began working from home, and many bus/rail users are thought to have changed to car. This early major change, and its impact on numbers and trends at that time, which may still be influencing traffic patterns to some extent, was discussed in our count article of November 2020.