Marking World Bicycle Day on 3 June, WestCycle has released new analysis of the WA Government’s Perth Area Travel and Household Survey (PATHS), showing that most people who ride in Perth during the working week do so for everyday transport, and that short trips best suited to riding are overwhelmingly still made by car.

Across surveyed weekdays, around three-quarters of people who rode did so for everyday transport such as for getting to work or school, shopping, or running errands, rather than only for recreation. Yet of the short everyday trips under five kilometres, the journeys to work, school, the shops and to drop people off, nearly four in five (79%) were made by car. Walking accounted for most of the rest; riding made up under two per cent.

The reason is not that people don’t want to ride. RAC’s November 2025 member survey found that fear of sharing the road with motorists (44%) and a lack of safe, convenient and connected bike routes (30%) were leading barriers to riding, and that a majority were very uncomfortable riding on a busy street mixing with traffic, including over 70% of women and around half of men.

“We have an excellent active transport network, with trains and major shared paths running from the suburbs to the CBD,” said WestCycle CEO Wayne Bradshaw. “The data shows people ride and drive for all sorts of reasons, and a lot of it is short, local travel that never points at the CBD. The problem is there often isn’t a safe way to make those trips by bike, so people drive instead.”

“That’s where our focus needs to go: creating safe, connected places to ride, so these short, cross-suburban trips are actually possible on a bike. This can be achieved by creating lower speed streets and building supporting local infrastructure that focuses on people and not cars. We need to create safer streets for our kids to play and for people to travel. The demand for short local travel is already there. We need to make it safe and convenient to entice people to substitute short car trips for bikes and eRideables. World Bicycle Day is a good moment to focus on creating safe local streets.”

The analysis was carried out by WestCycle using PATHS, the Perth Area Travel and Household Survey conducted by Main Roads WA over 2018 to 2022. As the survey period spans the COVID-19 pandemic, it captures a mix of pre-pandemic, lockdown and recovery travel, and should be read as a broad picture of Greater Perth weekday travel over that period rather than a single point in time.

Notes:

• The analysis is WestCycle’s own, using PATHS data published by Main Roads WA here. PATHS is the data source; the findings and interpretation are WestCycle’s.
• “Around three-quarters” refers to 74.6% of surveyed riders making at least one utility-purpose bike trip on their travel day.
• “Nearly four in five” refers to 79.1% of short utility trips (under 5 km straight-line, utility purposes only) made by car (driver plus passenger). Walking was 15.1%, riding 1.9%.
• For all trips under 5 km regardless of purpose, car was 77.8%.
• RAC figures are from RAC’s November 2025 Active Transport Survey among its members.
• PATHS surveyed weekdays only; weekend travel is not captured. The survey ran 2018 to 2022, spanning COVID-19, and figures pool all survey years. Distances are straight-line, so the 5 km figure is indicative.
• PATHS does not show why people chose a mode, and does not separately identify eRideables; the reasons people don’t ride are taken from the RAC survey, and references to eRideables are WestCycle’s forward-looking position.