Print

---

Dear all,

Many thanks for your emails, and I'm glad if my paper seems useful.  To reply to your points/questions where I might have something to add (but thanks also for other comments):

Socio-economic position:  Actually cycling to work is NOT more common in richer areas across England & Wales as a whole (figure 3, left side of my paper).  However cycling has been increasing faster among the rich (figure 3, right side) and in ‘high-cycling’ areas then there IS a marked tendency for the rich to cycle more (fig 4).  As such, cycling (maybe) and walking (definitely) currently seem likely to be reducing health inequalities, but for cycling this may soon change.  As for the Oxford/Cambridge exception, I agree that there may be disproportionate lobbying by people in richer areas once cycling is established as ‘something people want’.  At least in Cambridge, I’ve also previously argued that house prices may be a major factor – as one person said in the qualitative part of our mixed-method study “not having a car in Cambridge and being able to survive, it’s indicative of quite a wealthy lifestyle because house prices are so expensive” (see Goodman et al, Healthy travel and the socio-economic structure of car commuting in Cambridge, UK).  It seems plausible to me that the same is true for Oxford, but probably not so much for Hackney.

Future plans with census data: Together with David Ogilvie and other collaborators at the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (Cambridge), I’ve just had one other paper accepted which tries to use the census data to evaluate the UK’s ‘Cycling Demonstration Towns/Cycling Cities And Towns’ programme (“Effectiveness and equity impacts of town-wide cycling initiatives in England: a longitudinal, controlled natural experimental study”, Social Science & Medicine).  This should hopefully be online in the next few weeks, I’ll be happy to send anyone interested a copy.  I’ve not got any other plans for the census data at the moment.  However, if Seraphim or anyone else does want to do some micro-level analysis & look at change over time, then you’ll be glad to know that I commissioned ONS to provide census 2011 data at output area level using a fully comparable methodology to the previous censuses (freely downloadable in table CT0050 here)

Other future plans: I’m mostly doing secondary analysis during my fellowship, but there are a few very small bits of primary data collection.  The most recent is actually already in press with (Seraphim will be pleased to know) Journal of Transport and Health, titled “The role of bicycle sharing systems in normalising the image of cycling: an observational study of London cyclists.”

Thanks all!

Anna