West Yorkshire Rider and Bike Stats

News

Part of what we do is understanding what local transport policies there are, how they affect transport in general, and what the implications are for motorbikes. Some of this comes fairly easily through things like press releases and the local papers. Other times it involves digging a bit further and doing some research. In November last year we put out a Freedom of Information Act request to DVLA to find out more about the number of bikes and riders there are locally. This can be found at https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/motorcycle_and_rider_stats_for_w.

The first bit we asked about is the number of people holding various types of licence, broken down by postcode area and year. We also asked if they had any figures for the number of people holding a DL196 CBT certificate. The nature of the DVLA database means they could only give us a snapshot of licence types rather than historical figures. Also they don’t record how many people have a CBT. This means they don’t know how many riders with a provisional licence there are which has implications for licencing policy.

The figures that we do have are as follows. They are broken down by the 6 postcode areas in West Yorkshire: BD, HD, HX, LS, OL14 and WF. They don’t correspond exactly to district boundaries. BD covers Skipton and Settle. HD includes Brighouse which is in Calderdale. LS includes Tadcaster and Sherbourne in Elmet (where Squires is!). OL14 is the postcode are for Todmorden where your webmaster has friends and family. Some parts of WF are in Kirklees. With these provisos in mind, here’s the figures:

Class BD HD HX LS OL14 WF Grand Total
A 23,157 13,571 8,571 32,549 964 27,005 105,817
A2 139 71 50 190 6 157 613
AR2 67 59 37 142 1 103 409
A1 135 69 40 290 5 92 631
Total 23,498 13,770 8,698 33,171 976 27,357

 

Class AR2 covers people with an A2 licence who will be upgraded to A when they next apply for a new licence. A1 includes AM moped entitlement. LS is obviously a much bigger area than OL14 so of course there will be more riders there. Courtesy of http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks101ew we can get the population for each of these areas and work out the rate of ridership:

Area BD HD HX LS OL14 WF
Population (2011)    578,336    262,814    160,378    774,180    15,481    512,657
Licence holders      23,498      13,770        8,698      33,171          976      27,357
Rate 4.06% 5.24% 5.42% 4.28% 6.30% 5.34%

 

The average rate for all these areas is 5.11%. BD and LS have somewhat better bus services than the other areas which might explain why they’re below average.

The next set of figures we got are for the number of registered motorbikes in each postcode area. Unlike the rider stats we were able to get them broken down by both postcode area and year. This covers all bikes including learner legal ones and mopeds. Those numbers look like this:

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
BD 7051 6990 7341 7246 7246 6906 6828 6697 6624 6532 6649 6728 6583
EXEMPT 870 845 855 845 817 853 844 833 908 918 958 983 998
STANDARD 6181 6145 6486 6401 6429 6053 5984 5864 5716 5614 5691 5745 5585
HD 4528 4486 4681 4696 4695 4507 4514 4422 4361 4430 4494 4569 4414
EXEMPT 474 490 475 470 500 501 513 522 559 586 593 621 642
STANDARD 4054 3996 4206 4226 4195 4006 4001 3900 3802 3844 3901 3948 3772
HX 2914 2893 2896 2910 2875 2692 2755 2716 2697 2656 2636 2650 2640
EXEMPT 294 286 275 287 287 281 279 287 294 305 301 330 350
STANDARD 2620 2607 2621 2623 2588 2411 2476 2429 2403 2351 2335 2320 2290
LS 9991 9884 10109 10133 10098 9868 9799 9700 9666 9670 9800 9870 9677
EXEMPT 1171 1186 1165 1176 1167 1187 1172 1181 1224 1227 1262 1285 1294
STANDARD 8820 8698 8944 8957 8931 8681 8627 8519 8442 8443 8538 8585 8383
WF 9824 9770 10007 10129 10021 9498 9652 9585 9514 9672 9661 9775 9874
EXEMPT 951 919 935 959 976 968 997 981 1059 1106 1128 1216 1243
STANDARD 8873 8851 9072 9170 9045 8530 8655 8604 8455 8566 8533 8559 8631
OL14 300 304 332 342 360 322 288 284 269 293 297 311 310
EXEMPT 47 41 42 47 42 42 45 42 48 50 49 46 46
STANDARD 253 263 290 295 318 280 243 242 221 243 248 265 264
Grand Total 34608 34327 35366 35456 35295 33793 33836 33404 33131 33253 33537 33903 33498

 

“Exempt” bikes cover the following:

  • Tax class 61: these are records where there has been no activity for some considerable time.
  • Motorcycles on the DVLA off road register.
  • Tax class 88: These are vehicles over forty years old and deemed to be historic.

The interesting figures are the “standard” ones. It’s impossible to tell how many people own more than one bike but they give a good idea of how many are in use. As a graph it looks like this:

The 2 part motorbike test was introduced in 2009 which probably put people off a bit. It was also when the Credit Crunch was starting to bite. In 2013 the automatic upgrade to the next licence category after riding for 2 years was removed. There was a slight rise in 2016 followed by a fall in 2017 which is probably due to the economic slowdown caused by the uncertainty over Brexit.

To put this in context, we need some figures from the Department for Transport to see how it compares to other forms of transport. https://www.dft.gov.uk/traffic-counts/area.php?region=Yorkshire+and+the+Humber has traffic counts for all local authorities in the Yorkshire and Humber area. Because we’re Leeds MAG the figures for our area look like this:

Year 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Pedal Cycles 3,909 4,229 3,847 4,483 3,565 2,800 3,769 3,813 4,926 5,415 5,254 5,799 6,204 6,153 5,975 5,828 6,373 6,368
Motorcycles 13,024 11,515 13,353 14,988 12,689 13,027 12,374 13,007 13,832 13,932 13,016 12,362 11,072 11,995 11,896 11,954 11,694 11,087
Cars 1,946,307 1,967,208 2,003,759 2,024,854 2,074,952 2,032,349 2,069,628 2,073,040 2,063,675 2,021,286 2,001,089 2,011,265 1,978,811 1,974,540 2,038,877 2,117,991 2,243,926 2,275,760
Buses & Coaches 21,700 22,594 21,913 21,741 20,965 21,689 22,964 21,425 21,007 20,653 20,497 19,230 19,375 19,367 19,428 18,874 17,185 16,277
Light Goods Vehicles 280,453 291,683 304,362 322,695 348,234 353,573 360,879 377,666 373,098 357,241 361,616 373,347 357,839 363,054 381,305 402,109 433,634 439,919
All HGVs 209,134 202,621 205,498 206,231 218,023 212,086 210,723 209,818 210,706 185,591 185,508 187,942 186,079 191,599 206,607 220,582 223,862 220,644

 

These numbers are the number of vehicles passing certain count points. More details can be found on the DfT website. As a graph it looks like this:

Due to the much greater number of cars this graph has a logarithmic scale starting at 1000 to make the differences stand out. Cars, LGVs and HGVs have risen. Pedal cycles have also increased, which is not a surprise given how heavily Leeds council has promoted cycling. Motorbikes have fluctuated pretty much in line with the number of registered bikes in the much larger LS postcode area and there are at least 5000 more movements than pedal bikes. Bus use has fallen (note: this is the number of vehicles, not a count of the people using them). Leeds council has also been promoting bus use very aggressively over the years but the only rise was in 2007 when free travel for over 65s was introduced. If it continues to fall this will have serious implications for the policy of taking road space away from other vehicles to give buses priority. People would rather sit in congestion in their own cars or catch the train than use buses.

What does all this mean for motorbikes? First, despite all the warnings of doom and gloom, motorbike usage has been pretty stable over the years. We don’t know how the number of riders has changed over the years and DVLA doesn’t know how many people have taken a CBT but we do know that the number of registered bikes hasn’t changed very much. This is despite changes to the licensing regime and official apathy towards them. A lot of the arguments for using pedal bikes to reduce congestion also apply to motorbikes. They take up less road space than cars and are more flexible than buses.

This is one of the first pieces of research that Leeds MAG has done. Hopefully it’s interesting. We have a couple more Freedom of Information Act requests in the pipeline asking Leeds council for more details about their bus lane policy and trying to get to the bottom of allowing motorbikes in bus lanes. More to come when we get it.