It was hailed as a shining example of the success of Grant Shapps’s active travel scheme and touted as evidence that the UK’s low-traffic experiment is working.

But a spot check by The Telegraph has cast doubt on claims made in a Department for Transport report about how busy a cycle lane is in West London.

The 39-page report, published last month with a foreword by Boris Johnson, declared: “Up to 2,700 people a day are cycling along the route, including children and families.”

It also claimed it had become so popular that the number of cyclists using it on weekdays between February and April 2021 had increased 72 per cent, citing figures from Hounslow council and the Department for Transport.

But on Wednesday this week The Telegraph sought to test the claims made by counting the number of cyclists using the lane on Chiswick High Road.

Between the hours of 7am and 7pm on Wednesday, just 1,026 bikes passed through – less than half of the figure cited in the report.

‘Neither value for money nor a sensible use of funds’

Tory MP Craig Mackinlay, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Fuel for UK motorists and UK Hauliers, declared the cycle lanes were “ill-conceived” and seemed like an “anti-motorist battle”.

“I’m all for a new dedicated space for cycling and walking but not at the expense of other road users,” he told The Telegraph.

“At a time when public finances are under severe stress, I cannot see that hundreds of millions of pounds for these schemes represents either value for money or a sensible use of funds.”

While Hounslow Council, which introduced the Chiswick High Road cycleway, is Labour-run, none of the Labour councillors live in Chiswick.