Number of cyclists in ireland

Roadhawk

Just wondering if anyone could point out some good stats on the current number of cyclists in Ireland?

benneca1

Roadhawk wrote: »

Just wondering if anyone could point out some good stats on the current number of cyclists in Ireland?

Cycling Ireland have 22 K members at least thats a start how many others no idea. 2011 census showed about 40 K cycling to work.

ThisRegard

What defines a cyclist?

An easy start would be to look at the last census and start with the number of under 18 year olds in the country, and keep adding to that.

Lumen

QNHS Sport and Physical Exercise Quarter 2 2013
http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/q-sp/qsp2013q02/

"Nearly 4 in 10 (37.8%) persons participate in sport and/or other physical activity (excluding walking). See table 1a and headline table. The top three sports are individual sports, rather than team sports - aerobics/keep fit/gym (the main sport of 19.2% of persons), followed by swimming (14.2%) and then cycling (13.6%)."

So I make that 13.6% of 37.8% = 5.14% of the persons aged 15 years and over (3.6m people in 2013).

Or about 184k cyclists in 2013, probably 187k now.

brocbrocach

Seemingly CI have 60,000 on their books, 28,000 current members
http://www.stickybottle.com/latest-news/cycling-ireland-golden-age-of-growth-comes-to-abrupt-halt/

Of course the vast majority of cyclists don't have any dealings with CI or would even associate themselves with such a body. As said above most under 18s cycle a bike as well as any number of random people who cycle bikes.

What hate-filled diatribe do you have lined up this time?

JK.BMC

benneca1 wrote: »

Cycling Ireland have 22 K members at least thats a start how many others no idea. 2011 census showed about 40 K cycling to work.

Cycling Ireland has over 28000 members as of the recent AGM; the 22000 you quote equates to the non-competitive/leisure licence holders in the main.

Cycling is a sport too!

PeadarCo

Roadhawk wrote:

Just wondering if anyone could point out some good stats on the current number of cyclists in Ireland?

To a degree its like asking how long a piece of string is. There's no nailed down definition of a cyclist. Cycling Ireland's membership is around 28k. But they have in the region of 60k people on their database. The difference representing lapsed members. You'd also have to factor in other bodies like the Irish veterans cycling association. Even at that your just looking a sub set of people who are prepared to join a national body. Some of these memberships can and will overlap.

You then can look at numbers commuting but even the accuracy of the various reports can be questioned due the inherent limitations of the different survey methods. I'd argue casual cyclists far out wiegh the number of people who would be more sports oriented. I say at least some of people I'd see out on the bike wouldn't even consider themselves "cyclists".

There's no definite answer because your looking at a population with ages ranging from 2/3 years old plus and who use bikes for a whole load of reasons.

Lumen

brocbrocach wrote: »

What hate-filled diatribe do you have lined up this time?

Capacity planning for a pogrom? I know we've a few under-utilised rail lines.

RayCun

How often do you have to cycle to count as a cyclist?
Most days?
Once a week?
Once or twice a month?
Have a bike in the shed that might get dragged out in the summer, if it doesn't have a puncture?

Roadhawk

I see what you mean...defining a cyclist...

Im trying to get a rough picture of how many cyclists there are that use the roads on a daily or weekly basis. anything after that could really be considered as a seasonal cyclists.

Eamonnator

What about triathletes?, some of them think that they're cyclists

Lumen

Ah, I see where this is going.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057655831

Roadhawk

Lumen wrote: »

Ah, I see where this is going.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057655831

No its not related to that.

PeadarCo

Roadhawk wrote:

Im trying to get a rough picture of how many cyclists there are that use the roads on a daily or weekly basis. anything after that could really be considered as a seasonal cyclists.

Could you explain why you want the amount? If people know why you want the information they could point you towards a better definition that would suit your needs. As I mentioned in my previous post its a very vague question given the information that's available.

JK.BMC

Roadhawk wrote: »

No its not related to that.

Well- what?

'Yer honour, I was lying in the hammock one afternoon and this random bike- related thought came into my mind. So m'lord I just happened to type it on the Internet to see what wud happen.'

And then they didn't pay road tax and ysddayadda yay happened....

buffalo

Lumen wrote: »

Ah, I see where this is going.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057655831

Well if the Ballybrophy line means the Govt is willing to pay out €550 per passenger, that means for a €1b investment in cycling infrastructure, we need about 1.8m on their bikes.

Lumen

buffalo wrote: »

Well if the Ballybrophy line means the Govt is willing to pay out €550 per passenger, that means for a €1b investment in cycling infrastructure, we need about 1.8m on their bikes.

€550 per passenger journey.

There are a million-ish journeys on Dublin bikes alone, per year.

Also, 1bn was over 5 years, typical misrepresentation by the Indo not corrected by the OP.

Weepsie

buffalo wrote: »

Well if the Ballybrophy line means the Govt is willing to pay out €550 per passenger, that means for a €1b investment in cycling infrastructure, we need about 1.8m on their bikes.

Would you not just need 1.8 million journeys* by bike.

*Perhaps measured as those from a to b over a certain distance

Roadhawk

PeadarCo wrote: »

Could you explain why you want the amount? If people know why you want the information they could point you towards a better definition that would suit your needs. As I mentioned in my previous post its a very vague question given the information that's available.

Im trying to figure out what the ratio of cyclists are killed to how many cyclists there are.

Example:
As in, there are 1,985,130 private motorists with 125 deaths in 2015 so thats 1 in every 15,881 motorists...that kind of thing.

ford2600

http://irishcycle.com/collisions/

You'll notice a downward trend.

The one fundamental driver of increased cyclist safety (from other studies which "tomasrojo will no doubt link to!) is increased cyclists; not helmets, high vis etc etc

magicbastarder

Roadhawk wrote: »

Im trying to figure out what the ratio of cyclists are killed to how many cyclists there are.

Example:
As in, there are 1,985,130 private motorists with 125 deaths in 2015 so thats 1 in every 15,881 motorists...that kind of thing.

might be more meaningful to try to phrase it as an 'how many deaths per million kilometres' or per million hours travelling. though you would be extremely hard pushed to get accurate figures on that.

Wishbone Ash

Roadhawk wrote: »

Im trying to figure out what the ratio of cyclists are killed to how many cyclists there are.

Example:
As in, there are 1,985,130 private motorists with 125 deaths in 2015 so thats 1 in every 15,881 motorists...that kind of thing.

How is a 'private' motorist determined? Most adult cyclists are motorists but very few motorists are cyclists. Similarly, almost all commercial drivers such as van, bus and truck drivers are also private motorists as are most drivers of agricultural vehicles and a large portion of motorcyclists.

Weepsie

Are you trying to show that driving is safer than cycling perhaps? I think we all suspect you may have an angle/agenda here, but perhaps not.

If so, remember that many if not most of these deaths were as a result of collisions with cars/trucks (one with a pedestrian). I'd take from that, a bike is safer than a car as it is extremely unlikely to kill someone in a collision, though it will offer less protection to its user

PeadarCo

Roadhawk wrote:

Im trying to figure out what the ratio of cyclists are killed to how many cyclists there are.

Why are you interested in the figure? What's the context?

JK.BMC

Roadhawk wrote: »

Im trying to figure out what the ratio of cyclists are killed to how many cyclists there are.

Example:
As in, there are 1,985,130 private motorists with 125 deaths in 2015 so thats 1 in every 15,881 motorists...that kind of thing.

Is this Project Maths for the Leaving Cert? The honours course perhaps...

How many loose chopping per square metre are needed to cause a regular windscreen to smash while traveling in wet weather at 50kmh-type-of-thing????

Weepsie

JK.BMC wrote: »

Is this Project Maths for the Leaving Cert? The honours course perhaps...

How many loose chopping per square metre are needed to cause a regular windscreen to smash while traveling in wet weather at 50kmh-type-of-thing????

That sounds like some of the Applied math questions that I recall cropping up years ago before I realised that I was crap at math, let alone applied math.

07Lapierre

How many cyclists in Ireland?
Answer: Not nearly enough!

ThisRegard

07Lapierre wrote: »

How many cyclists in Ireland?
Answer: Not nearly enough!

Well based on the thread starter and their history, his answer will be Too many.

tomasrojo

If you're looking to compare how risky cycling is compared to driving, the usual metric is Killed or Seriously Injured per billion kilometres travelled, or per million hours travelled. Something like that. Driving has somewhat lower KSI rates when expressed per hour, and a good bit lower when expressed per km. If you're looking at the risk of dying on the road during your lifetime, the per-hour rate is probably more relevant, as, with a few exceptions among posters here, most people aren't going to cycle the distances motorists clock up per lifetime, but they might well spend as much time cycling as motorists spend behind the wheel.

David Spiegelhalter was talking about the UK risk, and he said that the risk of cycling relative to driving was about the same as non-motorway driving compared to motorway driving. He said that since most people don't feel they're entering a high-risk zone when they leave the motorway in their car, there was no particular reason to feel that cycling was unacceptably risky. I might be misreporting him there, as this is from memory. It was on an episode of More or Less on BBC Radio 4.

Also, in the bigger picture, frequent cyclists live longer on average than frequent motorists, because the real risk (on average) is inactivity.

tomasrojo

(I don't have the relevant KSI figures for Ireland. If I get a chance tomorrow, I might try to find them.)

07Lapierre

ThisRegard wrote: »

Well based on the thread starter and their history, his answer will be Too many.

Actually I thought the OP was trying to suggest that the number of cyclists is so small that the idea of spending 1 billion euro (over 5 years) was a bad investment