This article is generously contributed by Timothy F. Welch, Urban Planning Programme Director and Co-Director: Future Cities Research Hub at The University of Auckland. We recommend checking out Tim’s work.
The latest cycle counts from Auckland Transport are in, and they tell a story worth celebrating. In April, riders made 309,197 trips across AT’s 26 historical monitoring sites. That’s a 20 per cent jump from April 2025, and it makes last month the busiest April Auckland has recorded since 2019.
For a city that has spent decades being told riding a bike is a niche pursuit, the growth in cycling is remarkable result. It’s also another data point in a growing trend. The year-to-date total now sits at 1.30 million trips, and the rolling twelve-month tally has reached 3.48 million cycle movements. The trend is up, and it is up sharply.
The most likely reason for the surge is one that no Bike Auckland supporter needs explained. As the cost of driving climbs, more Aucklanders are reaching for the bike to get to work, make school runs, or pick up the groceries.
The data doesn’t let us draw a perfect line of cause and effect, but the timing is hard to ignore. This is exactly the kind of mode shift that Bike Auckland, and the Cycling Action Network have been pointing to with the Fuel the Future campaign. The fuel crisis is a transport crisis, and Aucklanders are already showing us one part of the answer.
These numbers also say something less obvious but just as important. People are riding because the infrastructure that has been fought for, lane by lane and submission by submission, is doing its job. Where the network is connected and safe, riders are showing up.
There is still a lot of work ahead. Plenty of suburbs are still missing safe, connected routes. Political appetite for extending the network has wobbled, and the cycleways that exist are too often disconnected from one another. On top of that, a proposed national infrastructure budget is coming soon and will likely continue to exclude funding for cycling.
The April result is good news, but it should also act as a green light to push much harder. Aucklanders want to ride. The job now is to make sure more of them can.
For anyone who likes to watch this trend in real time, the monthly counts, along with detailed charts and analysis are at cycleway.tfwelch.com.
