More city cyclists get on their bikes – but there’s untapped demand for more

More people are getting on their bikes in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, with numbers up year-on-year.

But researchers and council staff say there is untapped demand from those who do not have bikes, or the confidence to ride them.

Christchurch City Council’s transport planning manager Jacob Bradbury says the post-quake rebuild gave the city a chance to become more bikeable for the many people who say safety is their biggest concern.

He said there had been 40% growth since 2017.

Last year the city’s cycle counters recorded only a small small bump of just under 1% on the previous year, however one cycle counter on a popular route was out of action, the council said.

“When we build new bits of cycleway we tend to see a higher number of people down stream of that straight after the new section has been built,” said Bradbury.

With three quarters of the city’s planned major cycleway networks finished, cycle counters recorded around 4 million bike trips last year.

Some popular routes consistently clock more than 2000 trips a day.

Bradbury does not know why, but June 2025 was 14% lower than the previous year.

“We’ve had some pretty grotty weather recently but we did some analysis for May, and May was our highest May we’ve ever had, so we usually just see those numbers go up and up.”

Wellington City Council’s Liam Hodgetts said previous problems with the capital’s cycle counters had been sorted and its numbers were also going up.

The four key corridors into the central city have seen a 9.1% increase year on year to 87,000 trips in March.

“The residents themselves are perceiving the ease of cycling in the city to be better, that’s moved from about 17 to 51%. When people can see a seamless protected and designated network that takes them where they want to go they are more likely to jump on a bike,” he says.

Newtown to the city is Wellington’s most popular route, with a 94% increase in cycling since being finished in 2022. Two years after completion the counter at the Basin reserve was clocking between 8000 and 12,000 trips a month.

Monitoring showed more women and children using it now the path was fully separated.

Hodgetts said use of the Karori to the Botanic Gardens route was up 32% in the six months since that path was finished.

Auckland Transport’s Tania Loveridge said the Auckland region was also seeing an uptick of 5% average growth per annum over the past three years, as measured by cycle counters in 26 key locations.

“If we look at the year ending June 2025, that translates to 3.5 million trips across those counters, meeting our target for the year.”

One controversial new cycleway from Point Chevalier to Westmere has been used by nearly 500 cyclists a day on weekends over the past six months, a positive sign for meeting AT’s forecasts of 700 a day by 2028.

“The local football has seen a rally big uplift in kids cycling to the Western Springs football club.”

But Loveridge said 41% of Aucklanders felt mixing with traffic stopped them cycling, while 67% of those who would consider getting on a bike did not have access to one.

University of Otago transport researcher Caroline Shaw said affordable access to ebikes and help learning to ride them, would unlock cycling for many more people.

She said studies showed that in communities with low cycling, and with people whose skills were a bit rusty, there was willingness to take up e-biking but not regular biking. The terrain in parts of Auckland and Wellington did not help.

“It’s hilly, often there’s quite a lot of wind and people don’t necessarily have high levels of baselines fitness so a regular bike is not suitable for them.”

She said it was difficult for people to justify the upfront cost when people had not tried e-biking in a supportive environment, with help fixing them if needed.

Auckland Transport said it was planning e-bike loan schemes for Mangere and Hobsonville, after trials in West Auckland’s Glen Eden and elsewhere proved popular.

rnz.co.nz