On ya bike: Otago Polytechnic has its staff on two wheels

Otago Polytechnic will keep using pedal power to ease fuel-price pain – and continue leaving Dunedin businesses in the dust.

The polytech bought five easy-to-use bikes in January for staff to nip around campus and pop into town for meetings.

They are stored on campus and can be borrowed on a loyalty basis.

“Staff turn up, take a key and away they go,” says the polytech’s Mark Jackson, who put the scheme in place.

It’s common overseas and it’s becoming more and more widespread in New Zealand.”

Initially a trial, the bikes are now permanent and are nicknamed “polybikes”.

Campus environment manager Simon Noble says he can’t measure how much the polytech has saved in fuel costs, but says there have been environmental, social and health benefits.

“It’s going to become standard for business, I’d imagine, particularly with companies this size and smaller,” he says.

But bike store manager John Gray says Dunedin firms have been slow to follow the polytech’s lead.

“We haven’t been approached by any businesses [looking for bikes]. We thought maybe we have to approach them,” says Gray, who runs Cycle Surgery.

He concedes Dunedin’s hills – and cold – may be to blame, but reckons creeping fuel prices might change attitudes.

But the polytech’s Jackson says that, in the flat city area, the scheme has been fantastic.