What stops women cycling in London?

Central London Co-ordinator
London Cycling Campaign

Clare Rogers of London Cycling Campaign talked about the barriers to women cycling in London and how to tackle them. Their survey revealed shocking statistics about women cycling in London.

Last year, the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) Women’s Network ran a public survey of women in London about barriers to cycling and received over 1,000 responses. Published in January, the report is on the LCC website: What Stops Women Cycling in London?

The headline results are shocking.

Abuse and aggression

• 9 out of 10 women said they have experienced abuse and aggression while cycling in London; for 6 out of 10, it was at least once a month.

• The most common form of verbal abuse was ‘Get off the road’, especially when women were cycling in the primary position (in the middle of the traffic lane).

• Women reported physical abuse, e.g., the driver getting out of their car to assault or threaten women, and even sexual abuse.

• 93% said drivers had used their vehicles to intimidate them, including deliberate close passes, tailgating, and even hitting women with their vehicles on purpose.

Cycle infrastructure

• 90% said they would start to cycle, or cycle more, with better infrastructure for their journeys (like protected bike lanes or low-traffic routes).

• 1 in 3 women stop cycling after dark or in winter due to a lack of safe, well-lit routes.

• Over half of the respondents said they have to choose between a route on a busy road with no safe space for cycling or a route through quiet, dark places where they feel at risk.

Local journeys

• 86% of women said that half or more of all their journeys, in any form of transport, are local (up to 3 miles from home).

• But only 15% said their London borough has provided a local cycle network that meets their needs.

Our recommendations

Currently, only 1 in 3 cycle trips in London are by women. Our campaign calls on the Mayor to make cycling a form of transport that women and men use equally across London by 2030. We ran a petition for this, which reached over 5,200 signatures, and we handed it over to Will Norman, the Mayor’s Walking and Cycling Commissioner, at the LCC Women’s Freedom Ride on Sunday, March 3.

To achieve our goal of gender equality in cycling, we have three main asks from the Mayor:

Ask 1: Act on physical safety. Provide safe, high-quality cycle infrastructure across London, where women feel safe and confident to cycle, including with children.

Ask 2: Radically improve social safety for women cycling in London, working with the police, TfL, and boroughs. This includes police swiftly following up on reports of abuse and violence towards women when cycling and making sure that signed cycleways are well-lit and not isolated all year and all day round.

Ask 3: Provide local cycle networks, such as low-traffic neighbourhoods and safe routes to schools, prioritising them as much as commuter cycle corridors into central London.

There are more detailed recommendations in our report, What Stops Women Cycling in London, and you can find out more about our Women’s Freedom campaign on the LCC website.

Clare Rogers

Central London Co-ordinator
London Cycling Campaign