Because there was no better place to do it than Velo-City, the fantastic congress gathering bicycle experts from all over the world, we chose to unveil our 2016 Worldwide Cycling Index during this event! Read on to discover the full results.

Over 350 million trips logged by 2,360 counters spread across 32 countries. This is the data validated for the Eco-Counter 2016 Worldwide Cycling Index that measures bicycle traffic trends from 2015 to 2016 in various countries around the world. As the Eco-Visio database grows, so do the scope and range available for analysis for the Eco-Counter Worldwide Cycling Index. For the third edition, an additional 1,000 counting sites were added to the analysis, consequently feeding the Index with over 120 million more bicycle trips than in the 2015 edition.

Eco-Counter Worldwide Cycling Index: a stable trend for global bicycle traffic from 2015 to 2016

After seeing a +8% increase from 2013 to 2014 and a +3% from 2014 to 2015, the 2016 Index shows a stable trend for bicycle traffic between 2015 & 2016 (+0.5%). This stable trend splits up into a -0.50% for the counters classified as “leisure” whereas the counters classified as “commuting” show a +1.25% increase.

This global Index is calculated by measuring, checking and validating the difference between 2015 and 2016 total count data gathered from the 2,360 counters worldwide. The global trend is then determined proportionally according to the population of the country where the counters are located.

The raw progression states that 2.5M extra trips were taken by bicycle in 2016 compared to 2015 with a constant perimeter. The analysis by population highlights a stable trend globally.

In spite of this, there are notable discrepancies between countries. The countries with the biggest increase are as follow: Ireland (+8%), Norway (+7%), Denmark (+6%), New Zealand (+5%) and Chile (+5%). Then comes France, the UK and Belgium (+3%), Luxembourg and Poland (+2%), Sweden, Germany & Austria (+1%). Spain and Australia are stable, Czech Republic, Canada, Italy, the US and Finland slightly decreasing (-1% to -3%).

Top 5 Cities where bicycle use is growing the fastest

The Index also provides an analysis for the 38 cities that owned more than 10 bicycle counters in 2015 and 2016. The 5 cities with the highest bicycle use progression rate from 2015 to 2016 are as follow: Nantes (FR), Oslo (NO), Auckland (NZ), Lyon (FR) & Arlington (Virginia, US).

Global and per-country progression

Methodology

Full methodology is available upon request.

Global analysis

• Data extracted from the Eco-Visio global database to analyze bicycle counters only.
• Minimum of 4 months of comparable data between 2015 and 2016 for each specific bicycle counter.
• Manual check and validation of the whole database (exclusion of null data, inexplicable and/or strong variation).
• Global traffic progression weighed proportionally according to each country’s population.

Per-country analysis

• Countries with less than 10 validated counters were excluded from the analysis.
• The analysis was conducted with the following numbers of counters per country :
• Austria : 46 counters, Australia : 39 counters, Belgium : 29 counters, Canada : 174 counters, Chile : 10 counters, Czech Republic : 39 counters, Germany : 134 counters, Denmark : 14 counters, Finland : 43 counters, France : 689 counters, Ireland : 29 counters, Italy : 10 counters, Luxembourg : 21 counters, New-Zealand : 74 counters, Norway : 39 counters, Poland : 50 counters, Spain : 47 counters, Sweden : 115 counters, Switzerland : 98 counters, United Kingdom : 267 counters, United States : 339 counters

Want to see more? Read about the 2014 & 2015 Index.