How do you get a community moving?
OneBike at a time…

One bike might be a good start, but high volume “bike rescue, repair and rehome” was the goal for the 2023/24 season… and it is high fives and fist bumps for the OneBike team! Over the past nine months, 200 bikes have been rescued.

Bikes have rolled in from the community, with many good quality donations needing minor works to have them road-ready. A steady trickle of bikes from the Waste Management site on Glenda Drive has resulted in even more rescues. Saving over three tonnes of potential waste from landfill, any bikes that couldn’t be repaired, were stripped so that the individual parts could be re-used, recycled or responsibly disposed of.

Michael and the team of mechanics have worked every Thursday to restore bikes to their former glory. This has enabled the donation of 185 bikes (big and small) back into the community. This work was made possible by support from our funders, Queenstown Lakes District Council (Waste Minimisation fund), Central Lakes Trust and Community Trust South.

OneBike celebrated the opening of a temporary hub in Frankton, with two fully operational storage containers to support the work the team are doing. A permanent location for the OneBike Hub has been secured on the corner of Red Oaks Drive and Tulip Lane, opposite the Remarkables Market. This will be opening midway through the 2024/25 season.

The team have been super busy delivering Bike Maintenance courses, with sessions running on Wednesday nights and Thursdays March to July at Queenstown Primary, Wakatipu High School and Te Atamira. The sessions have had participants aged 10 to 70 years, and each week a new topic has been covered.

With a focus on extending the lifespan of parts and the whole bike, the sessions provide an effective, hands-on approach to learning.

From pop-up bike repair clinics, afterschool sessions for high schoolers, kids’ bike agility courses at events, and simply getting people on two wheels, the OneBike team has had a huge impact on cycling in the Whakatipu.

To continue our work, we’d love your support. We need volunteers to come join us in our mission to get everyone rolling.

CAN YOU HELP???

One of the long term goals of the OneBike programme is to see a system that recycles bike tyres and tubes introduced in New Zealand.

Overseas, Velorim has successfully launched a UK-wide programme that could be happening in New Zealand. See https://velorim-group.com/ for more information.