Cycling on EuroVelo grows in 2025, with renewed momentum and seasonal spread

Cycling traffic trends in 2025

The latest EuroVelo Usage Barometer for 2025, published in collaboration with Eco-Counter, confirms that cycling traffic on EuroVelo grew compared to 2024, with a significant overall increase of +4.0%. This marks a renewed upturn after a few years of plateauing in the wake of the COVID-19 cycling boom. While weekend traffic increased modestly (+1.5%), weekday cycling saw a more substantial rise (+4.8%), suggesting growing use of EuroVelo routes for daily mobility purposes.

Compared to pre-pandemic figures, cycling levels across the EuroVelo network showed a strong sustained increase, with a growth of +14.7% since 2019. The renewed increase in 2025 — after a period of relative stagnation — is an encouraging signal. However, continued investment in the network will be needed to sustain and accelerate this momentum in future years with two main opportunities in the EU: the Multiannual Financial Framework 2028-2034 for which negotiations started last summer, and the EU Sustainable Tourism Strategy announced for spring 2026.

Looking at monthly trends, only February and October recorded slight decreases compared to 2024. Particularly strong growth was observed in April and December, pointing to increased year-round cycling interest. During the summer holiday months July and August, traffic remained largely stable with a positive tendency. In total, 108 million bicycle counts were registered at 496 counting locations in 2025.

Seasonal trends: Growth in all seasons, with a focus on spring

A key finding of the 2025 Barometer is that cycling traffic grew across all four seasons, further flattening and expanding the seasonal curve. Spring saw the strongest growth (+6.7%), followed by autumn (+3.8%) and winter (+3.1%).

Summer remains the peak season in absolute terms, with an average of nearly 395,000 bicycle counts per day, closely followed by spring at around 375,000 counts per day.

This seasonal spread continues a longer-running trend: While summer (Q3) accounted for around 40% of annual traffic in 2019, it represented only 33% in 2025. Notably, spring weekday cycling surged (+9.3%) while weekend cycling during the same period stagnated slightly (-0.2%), a contrast that may partly reflect a catch-up effect following a spring 2024 weekday decline.

Further research linking traffic data to meteorological patterns will help interpret these seasonal shifts.

Route-specific developments

For the second consecutive year, the Barometer analysed traffic trends for all 17 EuroVelo routes individually, revealing considerable variation. Traffic grew on 11 routes in 2025, remained stable on one route (EuroVelo 7 – Sun Route, +0.9%), and decreased on five routes. Among routes with 15 or more counting sites, the strongest growth was recorded on EuroVelo 5 – Via Romea (Francigena) (+10.1%), followed by EuroVelo 17 – Rhone Cycle Route (+7.9%) and EuroVelo 8 – Mediterranean Route (+6.9%). The largest decline among routes with 15 or more counting sites was on EuroVelo 13 – Iron Curtain Trail (-1.5%).

Looking at longer trends, the picture is more positive: from 2023 to 2025, only EuroVelo 14 – Waters of Central Europe (with just four counters) saw a net decrease. All 12 routes included in the original 2019 sample have seen traffic growth since then, ranging from +2.6% on EuroVelo 15 – Rhine Cycle Route to +44.3% on EuroVelo 8, confirming a strong medium-term trend across the network.

As in previous editions, significant differences persist between routes in terms of the number of counting sites included in the analysis, which must be considered when interpreting results, also in relation to the length of the route. Routes with fewer counters are more sensitive to changes at individual sites, and development levels vary significantly across the network.

Urban, suburban, and rural cycling trends

For the second time, the 2025 Barometer analysed growth trends in different area types, categorising counting sites as urban, suburban, or rural. Traffic grew across all three area types in 2025, with rural areas recording the highest annual growth rate — a reversal compared to 2024, when rural traffic had shown a decreasing tendency.

Urban sites continue to see substantially higher traffic volumes: 10 times higher than rural sites and 5 times higher than suburban ones. This underscores that EuroVelo routes serve a significant local population, with more than 166 million Europeans living within 5 km of the nearest EuroVelo route. Rural sites recorded a strong average annual bicycle count of 47,200 (approximately 130 counts per day), with usage patterns indicating more leisure-oriented cycling: average daily traffic at rural counters is higher on weekends than on weekdays, in contrast to urban sites where weekday traffic dominates.

Methodological enhancements and future Insights

For the 2025 edition, the EuroVelo Usage Barometer used 2024 as the baseline year, with a sample of 496 Eco-Counter systems in 20 countries — substantially improving representativity compared to the original sample of 195 counting sites from 2019. Compared to the previous edition, approximately 50 counting stations were excluded after failing data validation. However, significant differences in representativeness remain between countries and routes. We hope to grow the sample of counters even further in the future to level these differences.

The renewed overall growth in 2025, the continued flattening of seasonal peaks, and the positive trends across all area types and most routes point to a positive development of cycling traffic on EuroVelo. Further research, particularly linking traffic data with meteorological conditions and route development progress, could provide deeper insights into these dynamics.

The EuroVelo Usage Barometer: A successful collaboration between ECF and Eco-Counter

The European Cyclists’ Federation and Eco-Counter have worked together since 2020 to gather data about the usage of EuroVelo routes using a sample of currently 496 counters installed across Europe. Data is monitored at the beginning of each calendar year and at the end of the summer season. The EuroVelo Usage Barometer, formerly published as the EuroVelo Usage Monitoring Report, is part of the EuroVelo Data Hub since 2021.

Article by Holger Haubold