Found this article on grist.org.
http://www.grist.org/biking/2011-06-...pla-outnumbers
Two things: 1) in some cases the reported percentage of bicycle commuters is as high as 42% of street traffic
On Cheapside, a street in the City of London, cycles make up more than 50 percent of the commuter traffic, according to official data, and account for up to 42 percent of traffic on Southwark Bridge across the Thames. In one Bristol suburb more than one in four people cycle to work. ...
2) But this also brings out the same kind of car-centric backlash that we are currently seeing in New York.
In London, bicycles are gaining ground as a mode of transportation. And as in New York, the uptick in cyclists is exposing some uncomfortable divisions, stereotypes, and backlash.
If there is a transportation sea change happening here -- and it looks like there might be -- it is not going to come without some angst. Bike riders, drivers, and pedestrians are all going to have to adjust both their attitudes and their behavior.
According to the blog Cyclists in the City (that's "The City," as in London's version of Wall Street), the latest figures from London's transportation department show a huge boom in the number of two-wheeled commuters. This runs counter to the constant hectoring of people like high-profile journalist Jeremy Clarkson, who has made sport of ridiculing people who don't burn fossil fuels to get where they're going, and who recently referred to cycling in The Sunday Times of London (paywall) as "a frontline propaganda weapon in the war on capitalism."
But an article from the same edition of the Times (excerpted on the Cyclists in the City blog) paints a picture that explains why anti-cycling polemecists like Clarkson are feeling uncomfortable:
Cyclists have for the first time outnumbered motorists on some of the country's busiest commuter routes during the rush hour.
On Cheapside, a street in the City of London, cycles make up more than 50 percent of the commuter traffic, according to official data, and account for up to 42 percent of traffic on Southwark Bridge across the Thames. In one Bristol suburb more than one in four people cycle to work. ...
The surge in the number of people switching to two wheels is likely to be even greater than the new figures suggest.
Most of the data was compiled before July 2010, when 5,500 rental bikes were introduced and the first two "cycle-superhighways" -- distinctive blue cycle lanes -- were opened by Boris Johnson, the mayor of London.
One thing about this uptick that isn't factored in this article is the increase in bicycle infrastructure that London has seen recently. We posted here a while back about how silly the notion of a Bicycle Superhighway seemed and how silly those blue bike lanes were. Perhaps now we can eat our words.