The North East has one of the lowest numbers of people commuting to work via bike across England, according to research from one of the UK’s leading bike retailers.
According to the data, only 0.4% of all commuters in the area regularly cycle to work, equating to roughly 11k cyclists. The only England region with a lower percentage was the West Midlands with just 0.2% of their commuters travelling by bike.
The research comes from Planet X, who created a unique scoring system to understand which regions of England show the most interest in the cycle-to-work scheme.
In addition to looking at the percentage of the workforce for each region that commutes by bike, the company also looked at the average number of monthly Google searches for the term ‘Cycle To Work Schemes’ and the amount of pedal cycle traffic for each area.
Interest in potential cycle-to-work schemes was also quite low in the North East with only 1,440 Google searches every month, the lowest of any region.
The area also has the joint lowest levels of cycle traffic, tying with the West Midlands, with cyclists contributing to around seventy million kilometres (per 1,000,000 population) in 2021.
Planet X also looked at the potential savings each commuter stands to make by opting to cycle to work instead of commuting via car.
According to their estimates, commuters in the region who cycle in every day could be saving over £135 every year based on a 10-mile journey to work.
What’s more, is that figure is based on the current average cost of fuel (1.62p per litre) meaning that if the price of petrol were to reach the same heights as last summer, the potential savings could be much higher.
Hester Gebbels, Marketing Manager at Planet X, adds: “There are a number of benefits to cycling to work, not only is regular exercise such as cycling great for your physical and mental health but it could potentially save you a fair bit of money each month and help you to reduce your carbon footprint.”
Based on the above example of a typical 10-mile commute, choosing to cycle instead of taking the car would save 780 kg per year in CO2. If we take that figure for everyone currently commuting by bike in the North East that’s 8.5 tonnes of CO2 saved every year, to put that into perspective that’s the equivalent of using your mobile phone for an hour every day for eight years or 17 return flights from London to Glasgow.