Bike rack plea as firm ordered to cut fleet

Nextbike says it will reduce its fleet of bikes to 170 despite needing to expand to break even. Photo / Natalie Slade

Auckland's main bike hire operator is being forced to prune its fleet to comply with a city council resource consent.

Nextbike has been told to stop using unapproved parking areas such as guard rails at intersections and on bridges over motorways and railway lines, where the council believes bikes are in danger of obstructing pedestrians.

But the company said it was providing a public service which many cities overseas operated free of charge to their residents and visitors, and has asked the council to install more bike racks to promote cycling as a healthy and feasible alternative to cars and buses.

Company principal Julian Hulls said yesterday it had agreed to pull 69 of its 170 bikes off the road by the end of this month, to comply with the city's demand, but was asking the council to allocate $149,000 for 149 more racks, on the basis that the Government's Transport Agency would provide a 53 per cent subsidy.

He said the company had made losses in its first two years in Auckland, and needed to expand its fleet to 250 bikes by October to break even.

If it was unable to do that, it would have to pull the plug on the operation.

City transport committee chairman Ken Baguley, who arrived on a bike for the Transport Agency's opening of a new $3.7 million link in the Northwestern Cycleway last week, said the council supported cycling but believed "footpaths are for pedestrians".

"It's a nice idea - but these things need to be off the footpath, and it's a pretty cheap way of just getting a whole lot of advertising on to the footpath," he said.

He was referring to the use of space on the bikes for advertising, which Mr Hulls acknowledged provided about 90 per cent of his operation's revenue, saying that was needed to support the 55 per cent of rides which his company offered without charge to registered users.

Mr Baguley said: "If someone came along and put a whole lot of billboards on the footpaths, we'd be objecting to that."

"They are also strapping them to bridges that overlook the motorway, which would be a distraction and again I guess it's an attempt to get advertising for cars going down the motorway which we just don't agree with."

Council network performance manager Karen Hay said officers were weighing up the public benefits claimed by Nextbike in its funding application against the best use of ratepayers' money.

Mr Hulls said providing Auckland with 250 bikes would be more economical than buying five new buses or building more carparks for the city.