Dear Spurtle,
In your October edition (Issue 366) you reported Cycling Scotland's analysis that showed 5,600 bike journeys on Leith Walk between 8am and 9am on 13 and 14 May 2026, presumably based on data from the bike counter at Picardy Place. This strikes me as a statistical impossibility: at 2,800 bikes per hour, this implies 50 bikes per minute.
Perhaps the modes of transport got muddled up? It is highly likely that in excess of 8,000 passengers travelled by bus through Picardy during the one-hour morning peak over the two days, with perhaps another 2,500 by tram.
As an aside, it is a shame that no one seems to count the long suffering foot passengers on Leith Walk. Or how many of the bikes using Leith Walk are commercial vehicles, often with illegally modified electrical motors.
Harald Tobermann
Chair
Edinburgh Bus Users Group
email: chair@edinburghbususers.group
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Dear Mr Tobermann,
Rather than being statistically impossible, 1.28 bikes passing a single counter every second is practically implausible. There again, given the surprising speeds and high levels of skill achieved by regular users of souped-up cycles, perhaps we should not be surprised.