Getting around
Do you still need a car in Leeds?
Loading cycling and traffic counts from Leeds City Council…
Cycling vs driving, since the baseline
Both lines start at 100 in the baseline year, so you can compare how each has grown or shrunk. Above 100 means busier than the baseline; below means quieter.
Cycling — average daily count per counter
The average number of bikes each cycle counter recorded per day, by year. Averaging per counter keeps the figure fair even as counters are added or go offline.
Motor traffic — average daily count per counter
The same measure for vehicles: the average number counted per traffic recorder per day, each year.
Cycling has a season
Average daily cycling by month of the year, across all the data. Leeds cycles far more in the light summer months than the dark winter ones — worth remembering when a single month is quoted.
Where the counters are
The cycle and traffic counters dotted around the Leeds district. The network is denser on the main routes in and out of the city.
Sources: Leeds annual cycle growth and Leeds annual traffic growth, published by Leeds City Council. Last updated —.
We focus on 2022 onwards, the period where both the cycle and traffic networks have continuous monthly data — earlier years are patchy and the 2020–21 figures are distorted by the pandemic, so they'd make any comparison misleading. Each recorder counts vehicles or bikes passing a fixed point, hour by hour. Because the set of working recorders changes over time, we don't use raw totals — we use the average count per recorder per day, which stays fair as counters come and go. It does assume the working recorders are broadly representative of the city, so treat the trend as an indicator rather than an exact measure. Cycling is strongly seasonal, so years with only a few months of data are less reliable and are flagged where shown.