Londoners commute the furthest by bike or on foot of any part of the UK, according to a popular activity app.
The capital’s workers who travel to work by cycling, running or walking travelled an average of 27 minutes and 13 seconds, covering about 4.4 miles, according to data from Strava.
People living in Merton had the longest “self-powered” commute of anyone living in England — 5.4 miles, which took almost 31 minutes.
They were followed by Greenwich residents and people living in Croydon, whose journeys took a fraction under half an hour.
The shortest foot or cycling commutes in London were in Havering (2.1 miles) and Redbridge (3.9 miles).
Nationwide, Strava users in Wales registered the second longest active commute (25:08 minutes), followed by the North East (24:54), the South East (22:33) and the East of England (21:35). Northern Ireland had the shortest walking or cycling commute at 21:33 minutes — a distance of 2.2 miles.
Strava said the anonymised data —from the one in six Britons who use its app — showed the daily commute had “slowly but surely returned” in 2023, though with differences to pre-pandemic travel habits.
Looking at bike rides alone, most London boroughs exceeded the UK average commuter distance of 5.3 miles. People cycling from Bromley and Bexley typically rode the furthest and longest — journeys in excess of nine miles that took almost 40 minutes to complete.
Strava data also revealed the 10 most popular bike rides in London, with half of them in Richmond Park. The others, based on Strava “segments” uploaded by cyclists, included rides from Ongar to Chigwell, Hackney to Great Dunmow and Epsom to Box Hill.
