Millburn Road - Cycling Volume Analysis

This is the third in a series of posts about a cycle lane in Millburn Road, Inverness. The previous post, detailing where we’re getting the data from can be found here.

What data are we looking at?

I’ve decided to concentrate on the main entry points and routes through the city. There’s a continuous counter placed anywhere you see this icon on the map below¹:

Image taken from Cycling Scotland Open Data portal (usmart.io)

This gives counts at the following locations:

• Millburn Road
• Ness Walk
• Greig Street

• Huntly Street
• Academy Street
• Crown Road

• Bank Street
• Bridge Street
• Castle Road

Both Millburn Road and Academy Street have two counters each, one for eastbound and one for westbound traffic. Since this analysis isn’t interested in the directional distinction, they have been combined into one count for each street.

Cycling volume history

The first number we want to look at is just how busy each counter is with cycle traffic. Figure 1 shows all of the cycle traffic volume data since collection started in March 2021. Millburn Road is highlighted orange, and you can mouse over the other lines to see which counter they correspond to.

Figure 1: Average daily cycle counts by road, 2021–2026

A couple of things stand out on the chart before we address Millburn Road. The first is that the data in the 2021-2022 period looks quite messy. I think it’s reasonable to say that the travel patterns in the early post-pandemic years is sufficiently different to where we are now to give that data a separate look another time.

The second thing is the steep drop in counts at all sites in the winter 2024/25 period. I don’t know enough yet to explain it, but I do want to say I’m working on figuring it out and will publish what I find. It’s worth noting that cycle traffic appears to be overall lower after this blip. Until I know more about whether that’s real or an artefact of data collection, I’ll refrain from commenting on any trends over time.

Figure 2 shows the data starting in January 2023:

Figure 2: Average daily cycle counts by road, 2023–2026

It’s clear that the Millburn Road counter has consistently been among the highest counts in the city. Other sites with similarly high cycling volume are Huntly Street (coloured ochre) and Ness Walk (coloured blue). The significant dip in volume in 2023/24 on Ness Walk was caused by its closure to upgrade the cycling infrastructure there (yay!).

Since 2025 is the most recent full year for which we have data², the median count at each site in that year also gives a useful picture.

Table 1: Median daily cycle counts by road, 2025

Location	Median daily cycle count	Days with data
Ness Walk	256	348
Millburn Road	218	362
Bridge Street	194	347
Huntly Street	168	348
Academy Street	152	349
Bank Street	122	349
Greig Street	119	347
Castle Road	102	351
Crown Road	19	352

This is a clearer way to show the main takeaway from this data: Millburn Road is, realtive to the rest of the city centre, busy with bicycles.

The Mode Shift Share

A really important measure when looking at any mode of transport is its share of the overall traffic in the data. Mode share (sometimes called modal share) is the kind of measure you could name a blog after.

Figure 3 and Table 2 show the mode share companions to our volume data:

Figure 3: Cycling mode share by road, 2023–2026

Table 2: Median daily cycling mode share by road, 2025

Location	Median daily cycling mode share	Days with data
Ness Walk	10.2%	362
Huntly Street	9.6%	362
Greig Street	5.5%	362
Bridge Street	2.0%	362
Castle Road	1.9%	362
Millburn Road	1.7%	362
Bank Street	1.0%	362
Crown Road	0.9%	362
Academy Street	0.9%	362

You may have had the same initial gut instinct as me - yikes. Millburn Road plummets down the table to nestle between Castle Road and Bank Street, neither of which is a big hitter in the cycle volume league above. Millburn’s previous contenders, Ness Walk and Huntly street stay at the top of the charts, with their mode share towering above all others.

However, if we take the raw volume into account as well as the mode share it actually highlights Millburn Road as being uniquely good at getting bikes through. Ness Walk and Huntly Street have high cycle volumes and high mode shares in part because relative to the other sites they have low numbers of motor vehicles. Millburn Road carries a similar volume of cyclists but with much more motor traffic. This is really clear to see if we look at the motor vehicle counts as well:

Table 3: Median daily cycle count, motor traffic count, and cycling mode share by road, 2025

Location	Median daily cycle count	Median daily motor count	Days with data	Cycling mode share
Millburn Road	218	11,960	362	1.7%
Ness Walk	256	990	362	10.2%
Huntly Street	168	754	362	9.6%

Cyclists on Millburn road are typically coexisting with a volume of motor traffic that is an order of magnitude bigger than comparable sites in the city.

Conclusion

It’s fairly clear that historically, Millburn Road is unique within Inverness city centre for its ability to transport large numbers of cyclists alongside heavy motor traffic. This in itself is not entirely surprising as it contained the only section of segregated cycle lane next to a busy road in the city but it does highlight the importance of that lane.

To me, this makes the Highland Council’s decision to remove a section of it right at the most complex junction seem to go against their stated vision to make active travel an attractive and realistic choice for more people, more often, for more of their everyday journeys. I hope they will take a good look at this data as they plan for how they will move forward at that site. I think it makes a good case for improving and indeed extending the cycle lane along that corridor to enable even more people to arrive in the city by bicycle.

Footnotes

1. The other icons visible on the map count periodic, not continuous data.

2. This year also avoids any major changes to the infrastructure layout at each site.