Last year, bike racks on buses were suddenly put out of action due to a newly discovered compliance issue. Was it a ‘knee-jerk reaction’ rooted in overregulation, and why did it take months to resolve? Shanti Mathias reports.
Putting bikes on the bus is a good way to encourage people to ride: it means that if it starts raining, or if you have a mechanical issue and can’t fix it where you are, it’s easier to get back home. Dozens of councils in New Zealand (but not Auckland) have had bike racks available on some or all buses in recent years, encouraging active transport.
“Nelson is a biking mecca – which is partially because of our gorgeous climate, but also because of the council investing in bike lanes,” says Nick Smith, the city’s mayor. When a technical issue with the commonly used front-of-the-bus bike racks was found last year, he says it had an immediate impact on both bike and bus use in Nelson. “I was very frustrated when NZTA made the ruling that bike racks didn’t comply with some complex regulation.”
He even took the time to show Chris Bishop the out-of-commission bike racks when the then-new minister for transport visited Nelson in February. “I raised it with the minister and I was very grateful that Chris Bishop was interested in the issue and was able to help with our application for an exemption,” says Smith, who was a National MP for more than 30 years. Nelson applied for an exemption to the bike rack rule and was granted it, meaning its bike racks have been back in operation since February 17.
The issue with the bike racks was that they caused the headlights of the buses to be partially concealed. In October last year, NZTA realised this meant the vehicles were no longer compliant with the road code – even though the bike racks had not been implicated in any accident. It issued an alert which resulted in the use of the bike racks being banned across the country. “There were no instances of the bike racks causing trouble even though we’ve had them in Christchurch for at least 12 years,” says Deon Swiggs, the deputy chair of Environment Canterbury. “As a politician, it makes me wonder – was a ban the best option while we were working for a solution?”
On April 14, NZTA issued an exemption for daytime use of the bike racks, which will last until February 6, 2026. “This gives operators time to check their fleet for compliance, make lighting performance improvements, and apply for individual exemptions that would allow 24/7 use of bike racks,” said Chris Bishop, the minister for transport, said in a statement to The Spinoff that this would give operators time to improve lighting and check their vehicles complied with the exemption.
In Christchurch, Dunedin and Queenstown, daytime use of bike racks resumed once this exemption was created. Once Dunedin and Queenstown’s buses were upgraded with extra lighting, night-time bike rack use was allowed from May 1. In Christchurch, the night-time restrictions ended on May 12.
In Wellington, bike racks on buses are still out of action. “While some other public transport authorities have employed NZTA’s exemption which allows bike racks on buses to be used during daylight hours, Metlink decided that all bike racks on buses would remain disabled until all 199 buses requiring modification were compliant,” said Hamish Burns, Metlink’s senior manager for assets and infrastructure.
Metlink intends for the racks to be back to full operation by July 1, 2025. Burns said the delay is to ensure consistency; the time will be used to upgrade all buses to comply with the regulation. This means passengers won’t have to guess whether a bus has a usable rack or not and drivers won’t have to determine whether it’s day or night. “We understand this period of no bike racks has been frustrating for our passengers with bikes, but we wanted to make sure that when they are enabled again, they are able to function at all times.”
In the regions that have secured exemptions, the bus modifications required were relatively simple. “The extra lighting is essentially a LED strip on the front of the bike rack,” Swiggs says. He doesn’t have a clear idea of what the costs of reinstating the bike racks were – but between NZTA, different councils and bus operators, he says that “many, many staff hours were involved”. There was a cost for the extra lights, too, which had to be sourced, safely installed and individually checked on each vehicle. “I see this as an issue of overregulation,” Swiggs says. “[The ban] was a knee-jerk reaction, not a pragmatic approach – given that there hadn’t been any issues, did we have to ban the bike racks during the day?”
There’s a social cost to having the bike racks out of action for months, Swiggs points out. “It’s had a huge impact for people in Lyttelton – they couldn’t get through the tunnel [with a bike] at all.” The alternative for cycling from Lyttelton requires biking over Evans Pass and through Sumner, a large hill and a significant detour.
Swiggs has also seen school students who bike to a bus stop and then take public transport to school affected by the ban. “It’s really impacted that last-mile transport,” he says. While there’s no hard data showing how bike and bus use was affected in the period of the ban, he worries that some people have gotten back into the habit of driving. “Biking is all about changing behaviour, and if you go back to driving as the most convenient option, it’s hard to change that behaviour back.”
Smith says he received a huge volume of positive feedback once the bike racks were back in action. “The public really wanted us to know how much they use these things, it made a huge difference to the people who cycle around.”
The saga of the bike racks – a seemingly minor issue with a complicated fix – is a reminder of why effective, multimodal transport is important, Swiggs says. “As a council, we have to be agile when issues come up – so that people have the choice to get around how they want.”
