Where exactly did you find those ONS figures? Compared to private cars, the DfT 2020 national travel survey gives taxis as responsible for 4% of trip mileage for London as a whole in 2020.But putting that aside, and taking your 15% figure for taxis, private cars still make up 60% of traffic according to the DfT traffic figures for all of London. In contrast nearly half (46%) of London households don't have a car. Even if a car-free household is disproportionately responsible for twice the mileage of all other vehicles compared to a household with at least one car, overall they are only responsible for 28% of the traffic mileage."What we can say is that more people means more traffic." Of course, but that was not your original point. You claimed in terms of overall traffic that the shift away from cars is going to be swamped by the increase in population. In fact taking an extreme case, if all of London's households gave up their cars, the population could increase by more than 60% and traffic would still be lower. That's based on your figure of 15% of traffic being taxis, and assuming car-free households are responsible for twice the mileage of non-car traffic, both likely overestimates.
Tom Pike ● 1694d