Tuk-Tuk taxi service takes off in Dunedin

In the age of Uber and high speed travel, a Dunedin student is going against the flow with a business ferrying passengers by bicycle.

Tuk-Tuk Taxis is the creation of Tim Rogers, a third year accounting student from Otago University.

He has been running the three-wheeled pedicab, or rickshaw, for several months and is already expanding.

It is a new sight for Dunedin's streets, though they are becoming common in Auckland and Wellington.

Mr Rogers clearly has an eye for marketing.

"This is actually a rickshaw, but people don't tend to know what a rickshaw is, and Tim's Tuk-Tuk sounds better than Tim's Rickshaw," he said.

He rides from 10pm at night until well into the early morning from Thursday to Saturday nights, while holding down his full-time studies.

Mr Rogers said there was a big market because at 1am taxis did not really want to take $5 rides from drunk students.

He said the students tended to treat him better because of the novelty of an open-air ride and because he had hooked up a blue-tooth speaker so his passengers chose their own music and sang the way home.

After several months, Mr Rogers has paid off the bike's $3500 cost and is expanding his business with a grant from the iwi, Ngai Tahu, for a second bike, which he will have someone else ride.

He said when working he gets flagged down continually, and has only about 15 minutes time off a night.

He thinks two bikes is probably all Dunedin needs at the moment, but he will take it as far as he can.

There were the normal hurdles; getting consents from the police and the Transport Agency, though not a taxi licence.

He said he started as a way to try out a business and make some money while at university, and he would recommend it.

"People at the beginning were telling me 'Oh, I don't know about that'... and the first night I was pretty nervous. I didn't know if people were going to hop on or not, but it was awesome."