Aucklanders jump on their bikes

Aucklanders are ditching their cars in big numbers and jumping on their bikes to work, study, public transport and the shops.

New research from Auckland Transport shows that 35 percent of Aucklanders are now cycling, an increase of 15 percent since 2014. There are also more young people and women adopting pedal power to keep fit, beat the traffic and save money.

Manager for Walking, Cycling and Road Safety Kathryn King says she is not surprised to see Auckland follow what is a worldwide trend.

“Great cities of the world like ours are changing as they stretch to accommodate more people and those people become more conscious of both their own health and the wellbeing of their community. We now have several years of intense infrastructure building and changing behaviours under our belt and we are seeing the results with a normalisation of cycling.
“In 2015 AT and the New Zealand Transport Agency agreed on a $200 million package of funding to transform Auckland into a city for bikes. This week we agreed we needed to extend our programme until 2019 as we are still working on what is a massive package of new cycling infrastructure for the city accompanied by a whole range of activities to get people on bikes. The Government is investing $333m across New Zealand through the Urban Cycleways Programme, to encourage cycling in the country’s main urban centres.”
More than half of Aucklanders (53 percent) say that a lot is being done to improve the state of cycling which Ms King says is the result of the fast development of a good quality network of cycle ways.

“In the past couple of years we have opened new networks in Mt Roskill, Mangere, Grey Lynn and Sandringham and we are now building the last parts of the city centre loop. By next year people will be able to cycle the full city centre loop and we know that this kind of connectivity translates into what we are seeing – Auckland becoming a city for bikes.”

The full report is available here.

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