Power of the pedal

Bike riding booms in lockdown

WHEN the State Government announced a COVID-19 lockdown would come back into effect in regional Victoria in a matter of hours on Saturday, 21 August, bike shop owner Brad Steigenberger had his busiest day in eight years.

“It was insanely busy on Saturday, it was out of control,” he said.

Mr Steigenberger operates Bicycle Centre Bendigo and said whenever a lockdown is announced, his customers gear up for more riding.

“We certainly get a bigger influx prior to lockdowns, for sure. Even during COVID, this last 18 months, our influx of people has been quite a bit more than the normal time of year,” he said.

“There’s people buying bikes, there’s people getting bikes fixed that haven’t been fixed for 20 years, it’s just that whole range of person that’s getting everything fixed so they can go and do something.

“We just sold an e-bike to a 70-year-old two weeks ago,” he said. “It’s the full gamut, it’s everyone.”

Mr Steigenberger said people were choosing to hop on their bikes in lockdown not just for exercise, but also for their mental health.

“I think it was more the physical part of it possibly to start with but then once they’ve gone out there and understood that they can just shut down and take their mind off everything, I think it’s been great for their mental health,” he said.

Data collected since 2015 from City of Greater Bendigo counters along several bike trails shows the number of daily bikes annually has peaked over the last two years.

An average daily count of bikes where the O’Keefe Rail Trail passes over Cashens Road was 95.4 last year and 86.3 this year.

Compared to pre-pandemic times in 2019, that number stood at 42.9.

On the Back Creek Trail at Havlin Street East, there was a daily average of 189.2 and 161.9 bikes in 2020 and 2021 respectively, up from 131.9 in 2019.

Bike Bendigo treasurer Adrian McMahon said the organisation were hearing from beginners wanting to know more about the city’s trails.

“Not all of us want to ride on the roads or have the confidence to ride on the roads,” he said.

“A lot of cyclists here either want to know about the local infrastructure where they might be able to ride on separated bike paths, certainly bush tracks, and there has been a big uptick in people also mountain biking in the area too.”

Bike Bendigo also host riding classes, which Mr McMahon said were a hit with participants last year.

“In the periods last year when we could run them, they were incredibly successful and we had a lot of good feedback about those,” he said.

“There are plans to run more of those this year and we do have funding from agencies such as VicHealth and VicRoads to run some of those, restrictions pending.”

He said Bike Bendigo also saw an “uptick” in interest to participate in their monthly community rides, with COVID capped places booking out “really quickly.”

“That was a real mix of people that may have bought their first bike, or they might’ve had a bike that they hadn’t ridden in 20 years and they were getting back out again,” he said.

“I’d expect that once we get out of the restrictions then we might see quite a bit of interest where we end up with larger groups and we may have to do multiple rides.”

As well as the O’Keefe and Back Creek trails, Mr McMahon recommended riders check out the Bendigo Creek and Long Gully trails.

“For people that might not be a mountain biker, there is the Bendigo Bushland Trail and it basically loops all of Bendigo,” he said.

“It’s dirt roads, most of them are pretty good quality, and if that’s something where you want to get into the bush a little bit more then… it’s quite a good location to go for a ride.”

Mr McMahon said Bike Bendigo hoped to see riding remain common practice for those who have picked it up recently.

“We hope that it does stay as a regular routine for people after COVID, that’ll be the interesting thing to see now is that whether these habits do stick once we go back to some sort of normal life.”