If cencus data is anything to go by, then absolutely.
http://www.celiamac58.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/travel-to-work-or-study-overview-of.html
So "good for Edinburgh" in a way, but why do I feel a bit more like it's shame on every other council in Scotland?
Headline facts;
Edinburgh is only Local Authority area with a less than 50% use of cars as primary mode of works transport. Glasgow a bit behind then Aberdeen. Everywhere else trending heavily towards 80% car use.
Edinburgh only LA area where car use has dropped since 2001 census as mode of driving to work. Quite notably too.
Edinburgh has 4th highest % of students getting to place of study by active transport, and appears to have highest by bike, by quite a bit (although lion's share walk).
My own playing with the Scottish Neighbourhood Survey datasets led to me plotting some graphs, in which I found the following;
Edinburgh is only LA where car ownership declining.
Edinburgh is LA with lowest access to car reported.
Edinburgh is not the LA with the highest level of bicycle ownership reported
Edinburgh is the LA with the most people saying they have walked to work in the last week.
Total car use in Edinburgh (vehicle KM) appears to be falling
I'll put these up when I get a chance.
The really telling thing is not that Edinburgh is so different, it's that the rest of Scotland is quite so uniformly car-dominated, and that the direction of things is to car ownership and use increasing.
So Edinburgh may be years (decades) behind European cities, but sadly it's also years or decades ahead of most everywhere in Scotland. But less than 50% of people in Edinburgh own a car, and less than 50% use the car as their primary method of getting to work. This suggests that the commuting motorist in Edinburgh is a minority! I'm not beginning to suggest that the majority are cyclists, but the alternative to the car is the majority, be it bus-walk (I assume this is the most popular in Edinburgh), train-walk or just plain walk.
If you believe the charts, that is.
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