The east London borough named one of the best places in the world for cyclists

Cycling through London can be a terrifying prospect. You’ve got to share the road with huge double deckers, swerve distracted pedestrians and navigate your way around some perilous junctions – to the uninitiated, it doesn’t sound at all appealing. But if you’ve ever thought about swapping public transport for a bike on your morning commute, there are few better, safer places to do it than the capital (honestly!). And there’s one particular part of the capital that has just been named one of the best places for cyclists in the world.

The People for Bikes City Rating ranks places across the world based on ‘how well the bike network in a given area connects people to the places they want to go’. It considers each area’s number of protected bike lanes, the off-street paths, slow road speeds and safe crossings to give it an overall score out of 100.  

Hackney ranked 29th in the world with an overall score of 83. It was named the second best place for bikes in the whole of the UK, just beneath Cambridge, and earned most of its points for its safe bike access to major shopping centres and to recreational amenities like parks and trails. 

Hackney has put a lot of effort into becoming a bike friendly borough. Its ‘cycle permeability programme’ sets out to make streets even safer and more accessible for cyclists and to encourage people to hop on their bike instead of their cars or public transport. Hackney Council says that it has the highest number of people cycling to work out of all the London boroughs. 

Unfortunately, all those bikes are a prime target for thieves in the area. Recent Met Police data has shown that Hackney is the worst place in London for bike thefts – it saw triple the average number of thefts across the city over a 12-month period. 

But back to the positives — London boroughs did pretty well all round in the People for Bikes City Rating. In fact, they dominated the UK’s top 10. Islington ranked third in the UK, Newham came in fourth, Waltham Forest was fifth, Southwark was sixth and Westminster landed in seventh. The number of cycle routes across the capital has more than quadrupled since 2016. Now, its cycle network covers more than 400km, with more routes (like this one on Shaftesbury Avenue) on the way. 

Brilliant bike rides from London to cycle out of the city.