82,000 people in Ireland on their bikes as their main mode of transport – Census 2016

— 42.8% increase in cycling to work between 2011 to 2016.
— 17,000 extra workers cycling compared to the previous Census.

Over 82,000 people resident in Ireland hop on their bicycles every week as their main mode of transport according to Census 2016 figures released today. Of those, 56,837 are cycling to work, while the rest are cycling to education.

The overall number of people commuting by all means of transport has increased by 10.7%. This includes an actual increase in the number of drivers, but at the same time the proportion of people traveling to work in a private vehicles is down by over 2 percentage points. However, this still amounts to over 73% of all workers commuting in a car as a driver or passenger.

Cycling accounts for 3% of work commuters’ main mode of transport, up from 2.3% in 2011. The full cycling modal share across Ireland is likely higher than 3%, as the Census question does not include multi-model commutes.

The CSO said: “Cycling to work has shown the largest percentage increase of all means of transport”. The percentage increase amounts to over 17,000 extra workers cycling compared to the previous Census.

33.7% of households in the administrative area Dublin City stated that they did not have a car in 2016, that compares to 91% percent of households in rural areas which had one or more cars.

Car to school continues to be the dominant means of transport

IMAGE: Means of travel for primary and secondary school students.
An increasing number of new primary school students walk or cycle to school (10,769 of 45,414 new students were walked or cycled), but the CSO said the “car continues to be the dominant means of transport for this group with 327,039 children (6 out of 10) being driven to school in 2016″.

The picture is worse with secondary school students — there were 27,767 new students overall, but the numbers walking or cycling increased by “just 855”.

Public transport use increased with this secondary school students by 3,429 to 105,222, representing 30% of journeys, however, the CSO said “Again, the car remained the main means of transport among this group” 146,755 were driven to school by their parents or other and 5,039 drove to school themselves.

More males at school or college aged between 13 and 18 years cycled to school than drove themselves (6,588 vs 2,971), but far more females drove themselves than cycled (694 vs 2,068).

With most third level students, the CSO said: “The number of third level students driving to college has fallen by 8,835 to 44,771 while those who travel as a passenger has increased to 19,125 (up from 16,291 in 2011). Walking or cycling to college remains the main means of travel accounting for 59,490 students while a further 59,087 used public transport.”


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