stats and numbers

Although there are more than 2.5 million cars registered in London, the capital is one of the easiest places to go car free, and there are an awful lot of households that either have no choice but to get by without a motor, and what seems like an increasing number of people who are deciding to give it a try.

Always one for a few graphs, tables and spreadsheets, I’m going to have a look at some of the context.

First chart is from Centre for London (their data page is here). This shows, borough by borough, the % of households that have, or have access to, a car or van. The darker the colour, the higher that percentage, and you can see that outer London boroughs (with fewer public transport options, or greater distances to travel) own more vehicles. In fact the very dark colours show over 75% of households have at least one car. Inner London has fewer car households – only about 1/3rd of households in Islington and Westminster for example own a car. Wandsworth, where I live, is about 50/50

Flipping it the other way, here’s Healthy Streets’ table of the percentage of households without a car. Again, the higher car ownership of the outer London boroughs is reflected in the fact that nearly all of these boroughs are below the overall average for the capital of being car free.