Bicycles make up an incredible 24 per cent of traffic on London streets at rush hour, a survey has found.

Transport for London conducted a massive census of cyclists, the biggest of its kind to date, which has highlighted the explosion in popularity for the two-wheeled green machines. Several major intersections saw a majority of traffic in bicycle form at peak hours, the famous London Bridge granting passage to 660 bikes an hour for the entire day.

The current figures make previous cycling targets look woefully unambitious, London’s new cycling commissioner, Andrew Gilligan says “cycling is clearly a mass mode of transport in central London and until now it hasn’t been treated as such... nearly all provision for cycling is based on the presumption that hardly anyone cycles, that you can make do with shoving cyclists to the side of the road and that just clearly is wrong.”

The cycling revolution is still on training wheels in Australia, though many major public roads now sport bike lanes, and provision of bicycle parking is increasing too.