Which UK cities have the best cycle facilities?

London, Bristol and Cardiff have come top in a survey produced by a PR company listing the top 20 UK towns and cities for cycle facilities.

A PR company for Bike Dock Solutions put the research together, ranking the areas on the number of kilometres of public cycle pathway and the number of publicly available cycle parking spaces. The PR company emailed cycle campaign groups and other organisations to compile its report.

The PR company was told the length of ‘cycle paths’ was not the best measure of success, but rather quality ought to be considered.

Bristol and London topped the overall table, with Cardiff, Oxford and Liverpool following closely. Bizarrely, neither York nor Cambridge did well in the survey. This is likely to be because those surveyed in York and Cambridge refused to supply information without provisos on cycle path quality.

Cities leading the way for cycle pathways were Leeds, London and Liverpool, with 627km, 563km and 152km respectively. At the lower end of the table, Brighton reported only 22km of cycle pathway , Southampton with 47km and Leicester with 76km – though Leicester has more cycle pathways planned.

For cycle parking, student friendly Oxford topped the table with 3,000 places (24.8 per cent), followed by Bristol’s 6,400 place and Hull with 1,600 . London reported 46,000 cycle parking spaces though the capital plans to increase this to 66,000.

“The most interesting aspect of this research is the sheer level of variation in provision,” said James Nash, Bike Dock Solutions director.

“The government has set great store by its Cycle to Work scheme, both as a way of improving the sustainability of our transport habits and also to improve levels of health and fitness. What this demonstrates is that with local authority budgets under severe pressure that aspiration is running some way ahead of the level of facilities needed to make it happen.”

Most Cycle-Friendly Cities Overall

Ranking Points

1= London 36

1= Bristol 36

3 Cardiff 31

4= Oxford 27

4= Liverpool 27

4= Hull 27

4= Edinburgh 27

8 Leeds 25

9 Sheffield 24

10 Manchester 22

11= Belfast 17

11= Coventry 17

13= Salford 16

13= Leicester 16

15 Newcastle 15

16= Southampton 14

16= Sunderland 14

18 Brighton 12

19 Swansea 9

20 Portsmouth 6