Cycling for transport and leisure is popular across Greater Manchester. It has been boosted by the city-region’s strong cycling culture and by political support for cycling as a mode of transport.
Recent years have seen substantial investment in active travel — including segregated cycle routes, redesigned junctions (e.g. CYCLOPS junctions), improved crossings, network-scale schemes (the Bee Network), and traffic-free greenways linking parks and waterways.
Discover how Traffic Technology and Eco-Counter helped the city-region measure the success of their actions. This allowed them to communicate with the public to share active travel success.
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Since 2014, many key routes into Manchester city centre have been upgraded to include dedicated (often bus‑segregated) cycle lanes, including the high-profile Oxford Road project.
The Oxford Road corridor in Manchester is one of Europe’s busiest bus routes, with over 100 buses using it every hour. It also has high footfall and is a strategic cycling link for the city — all competing for limited street space.
To make cycling safer, give buses priority, and reduce conflict between buses, cyclists, and pedestrians, an ambitious redesign project started in 2014. |
To measure the effects of “one of the most ambitious highway projects Manchester city centre has seen” (from Transport for Greater Manchester officials words), stakeholders needed a clear, credible way to:
In a nutshell: a simple, continuous picture of who uses the corridor, when, and how — robust enough for both operational use and public-facing reporting on active travel evolutions.
To achieve this, the local authorities used a mix of permanent automated counters, temporary manual and automated studies, enforcement and monitoring of traffic flows, plus surveys and safety/behaviour evaluations to track outcomes.
“The Eco-Display is very popular with the cycling community and the public in general in Manchester. It is a visible indication of TfGM’s commitment to supporting sustainable travel, and has allowed TfGM to promote the success of the Oxford Road cycling infrastructure scheme.” Martin Mildenhall, Intelligent Transport Systems Engineering Manager at TfGM.
After the project was completed in 2017, an initial analysis was carried out to measure the impact of the scheme (published on GOV.UK). The official report notes:
Total southbound flow in the 11-week period in autumn 2017, one year after installation of the counters, was 38% higher than in the same period in autumn 2016. Counts analysed for March 2018 show there had been continued increase in cycle volumes in the section 2 to 2.5 miles from the city centre. Relative to the March 2015 baseline, the March 2018 count shows increases in cycle volumes 0-2 miles from the city centre of between 85% and 176% and increases in cycle volumes 2-2.5 miles from the city centre of between 104% and 128%. In the calendar year 2018 more than 1 million journeys were counted on the route on Oxford Road, with up to 5,000 people passing each day. This equates to 621,000 car journeys, and reduces up to 1.9 tonnes of nitrogen dioxide or 873.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
But it didn’t stop there. In the longer term, data from the counter and display show that cycle traffic kept on breaking records, year after year.
Overall, between 2018 and 2025, cycle traffic increased by 33%, from 2,888 average daily trips to 3,846.
Public reporting indicates ~7,000 cyclists/day in October 2025, up from ~2,000/day before the segregated cycleway.
Globally, Greater Manchester recorded 700M+ active travel trips in 2025, reinforcing the value of measurement and public reporting for walking and cycling growth.
As we can see in this success story, the metrics & public-facing display helped to:
Permanent counting helps guide decisions and supports regular communication before, during and after a project, so progress can be tracked. It keeps providing evidence of behaviour change long after the redesign has been completed.
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