One of the less obvious indicators of the health of cycling is the emergence of new suppliers to the infrastructure market. The latest of these is RTL, which has provided road signs and traffic safety equipment in this country for more than 25 years. Two months ago it launched the American Saris range of public pumps, bike repair stands and other infrastructure here.
Bike Auckland welcomes RTL to the party, not least because it has partnered with us as an advertiser on this website. We asked the RTL team to background their move into cycling infrastructure:
How do you describe the market for public bike repair stands and public pumps?
Cycleways, local parks, railway stations, schools, universities, office towers and recreational cycle trails are all potential customers. We don’t think it will be too big a task for us to sell 50 units in the first year just into public spaces.
Any building with end-of-trip facilities will also require bike repair stands. There are loads of office towers in all major NZ centres now offering end-of-trip facilities like showers, towel service, bike parking, etc to their tenants.
What can we expect to find on a public bike repair stand?
Tools are all high quality and highly durable with extra thick cables to discourage vandalism. They include Philips and standard screwdrivers, steel core tyre levers, a headset/pedal wrench, 8/10mm cone wrench, 9/11mm cone wrench, Torx T-25 and a hex key set.
The full stand set up includes the repair station which houses the tools and has the bars to balance the bike on, the wheel chock to position and hold the bike in place alongside the station and the bike pump which can be mounted to the floor or the stand itself.
Bike infrastructure is growing steadily in Auckland. Are you seeing signs of this in demand for your range?
We started promoting this range about two months ago and have received a huge level of interest. We are doing the rounds getting the word out to designers and councils and to Auckland Transport. We have a number of active sales leads.
There are already products being sold into this space however the Saris range is outperforming those products in Australia and we expect to mimic this in NZ.
We will be bringing in parking products very soon as well as products in the electric bike sector. There is loads more to come from RTL and Saris.
RTL is experienced in road safety and traffic management, thus cycling infrastructure is a natural fit for us. We understand these products need to be highly durable, installed properly and maintained well – this is at the core of our everyday business activities.
