Cycle routes more popular than people think

If you ever feel like you have totally misread everyone’s opinion on an issue, you are not alone: it’s quite common. A good example in the news recently is that many people believe that London is now a lawless no-go zone, riven with crime, whereas the reality is very different.

Research shows that half the public think London has the highest rate of violent crime of any region in the UK, whereas in reality London has the lowest rate of violent crime. These misperceptions about crime in the capital may be driven by social media and people with a particular axe to grind.

There are all of sorts topics where humans find it all too easy to make perception mistakes – there’s even a book about it by Bobby Duffy called Why We’re Wrong about Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding.

In 2020 Cycling UK commissioned a YouGov survey which discovered that people tended to overestimate other people’s opposition to active travel schemes. More than half (56%) of people said they support active travel measures, but the same people thought only a third (33%) of the public support them.

In the same year #BikeIsBest found a tendency for people to overestimate other people’s dislike of cycling.

Overestimating the opposition

What is going on here? Why are people overestimating other people’s opposition? It’s an example of what’s sometimes called pluralistic ignorance: a type of cognitive bias where people believe their views differ from others.

Professor Ian Walker, Head of the School of Psychology at Swansea University, carried out research which explored this disconnect in perceptions and found that people significantly underestimated public support for sustainable transport options relative to their own support for such schemes.

The concern is that this misperception phenomenon is likely to affect decision-makers too – the councillors and local authority staff who have the power to give the go-ahead to new cycling schemes.

They may wrongly think that the community is opposed to investing in a new cycle route even though individuals in the community are mainly supportive and they themselves think it’s a good idea too.

Ian Walker and his colleagues in the study agree, and also found that pluralistic ignorance may rear its ugly head in another way: in public consultations people don’t say they support measures to make cycling better because they think the majority of people in the community don’t want it.

Minority opinions

People are often unwilling to put their heads above the parapet and instead tend to ‘hide’ their true opinions because they incorrectly assume that what they think represents an unpopular minority view.

Misperceptions about the level of public support for cycling can be a real barrier to getting safe cycling infrastructure built in our communities.

One way to counteract this is to show decision-makers the reality by surveying real people. At Cycling UK we commissioned two YouGov surveys in 2026, asking questions about support for cycling and measures which make cycling safer and more enjoyable.

The results show a similar pattern to what we saw in 2020 and what Ian Walker has found. The YouGov survey in March found:

• 49% of respondents supported increasing the number of protected cycle lanes where they live with only 37% opposing this; 32% of the respondents thought other people where they live would support this measure.
• 50% supported reducing speed limits where they live; only 38% thought others would.
• 70% supported introducing ‘school streets’ which would limit motor traffic outside of schools at the beginning and end of the school day to enable more children to walk or cycle to school; 49% thought others would support this measure.

A more recent survey in August found:

• 73% of respondents supported redesigning residential streets to make them safer for children; only 55% believed that other people also support it.
• 64% believed the UK as a whole would be improved with less motor traffic on roads; only 45% believed others would agree.
• 55% said they support making more residential streets access only for motor vehicles; 41% believed other people would agree with this.

The reality is that this overall mismatch in perceptions is consistent across the surveys – the gap is at around 15 percentage points.

If councillors and local decision-makers are not hearing or understanding that these measures are actually popular, then plans for new cycle schemes won’t go forward or are more likely to get rejected at a later stage.

Overturning misperceptions

A second action we can take to counteract the mismatch in perceptions is to show local decision-makers the places where measures to improve cycling have worked and are popular.

Our new report ‘The Route Forward: The people and places being transformed by cycling’ aims to do just this and to encourage and inspire councils to build high-quality infrastructure in their own areas.

It showcases 11 places around the UK which have created routes and in doing so have enabled people to cycle and have improved the places for everyone.

The report is full of data to prove the popularity and benefits of the routes, but it also tries to win the hearts of local decision-makers by telling the stories of real people in the case study locations whose lives have been transformed.

Many measures making cycling safer are much more popular than they are believed to be.

It’s vital that we keep telling councillors and our local councils that we want safe space for cycling in our areas.