It is not just our street.

Date: 6 October 2026

Scope note: this article collects publicly posted complaints by other people. Quotes are reproduced as posted and linked to their source. Posters are described by area rather than by name or username. Their accounts are their own experiences, not measurements by this campaign.

This site exists because one residential street in Cape Town became a shortcut for Checkers Sixty60 delivery motorbikes. For months, the story here has been about that street: the counts, the recordings, the promises and the lack of change.

It is easy for a large company to treat that as one unhappy household. So it is worth saying clearly: it is not just our street. Residents in other suburbs and other cities are describing the same experience, often in almost the same words.

"Has anyone else realised the amount of noise that delivery bikes have added to Cape Town?"

That was the question a Southern Suburbs resident asked in a public r/capetown thread titled "Delivery bike noise". They described "almost a constant flow of sixty60 deliveries or uber eats", "these velocity bikes that make the most amount of noise", and deliveries running "up until 11:30 pm at night". Like us, they said riders "use our road as a shortcut and there is no relief from it."

The replies came from all over:

• Kenilworth: "90% of the noise here in Kenilworth is those [riders] on exhaust-pipe-machines."
• Claremont: "I just want to sit outside in the garden and play with my cat on a nice afternoon but get sooooo agitated by the incessant noise that I just go inside and close every door and every window."
• Near a Checkers store: "Constant droning and back firing. It's soul destroying."
• Vredehoek (a former resident): "No trees to block the noise and houses right on the roads. All day you would just hear the loud Chinese 150 cc engines."
• Northern suburbs: "it's constant here in the north as well."
• Johannesburg: "It's not just Cape Town. You hear this in most areas of JHB."

Others mentioned riders cutting through a gap behind their property, squeaky brakes, bikes that "sound like drones", and Sunday afternoon naps that are "no longer as nice as they used to be".

People are moving house over this

The most striking replies were not about irritation. They were about leaving.

"I moved from my last apartment because of this. It was unbearable!" one resident wrote. The original poster replied that they were "also looking at moving. So sad it used to be a peaceful neighbourhood."

A home is supposed to be the place you recover from the day. When residents conclude that the only way to get quiet is to sell or leave, the cost of a delivery shortcut has been pushed onto the people who live beside it.

A rider's view of the noise

One of the most useful replies came from someone who delivers for Uber Eats on weekends. Replying to someone who wondered whether the loud bikes were modified, they wrote:

"Not modded just lack of maintenance and broken exhaust systems. Also the Big boys are a bit louder than all the other brands. I also deliver Uber eats on weekends and my Sym is a 200cc and makes very little noise."

That matters for two reasons. First, it matches what residents on our street report: the BigBoy Velocity motorbikes are the main source of the noise. Second, it suggests the noise is not an unavoidable cost of motorbike delivery. Quieter bikes already exist, and a working exhaust is a maintenance standard, not a luxury.

Complaints on Hellopeter go unanswered

Residents have also taken the problem to Hellopeter, and the pattern there is silence.

In February 2025, a Rondebosch resident described "incessant and high level of noise pollution from the Sixty 60 delivery service bikes" on the village's inner roads from 8am to 8pm daily, with "a seriously negative impact on the quality of life of residents". The review says residents had asked Checkers management several times to fit mufflers, without result. It received no public reply.

Another resident has posted a series of noise reviews about Checkers and Sixty60 since mid-2026: "Awful, noisy delivery bikes disturbing our neighbourhoods 11 hours a day!" and "Delivery up to 12 hours a day, EVERY day. Residents are fed up." None of those reviews shows a reply either.

Similar comments appear on the MyBroadband forum, where one user wrote in January 2024: "I live close to a Checkers, and from 7am until 7pm I constantly hear the annoying buzzing of their motorbikes." They wished someone would "take Checkers to task over the bikes noise pollution and force them to get better/quieter bikes or eScooters."

Pingo carries the same complaints

Most Checkers Sixty60 riders work for Pingo, a delivery company in which Shoprite owned half and which it received approval to acquire in 2024. Residents have left noise complaints on Pingo's Google reviews too.

One Hellopeter reviewer put the problem bluntly: "Checkers gives Pingo the blame, but the Checkers brand is all over the bikes." Whether a complaint is addressed to Checkers, Sixty60 or Pingo, it ends up with the Shoprite group.

The promise-then-relapse pattern is not new

In April 2024, a Parkhurst resident in Johannesburg wrote to the Financial Mail that Checkers Sixty60 bikes were using a public park's pedestrian paths as a shortcut. The delivery service replied that the practice would be stopped right away. In the letter's words, "there was a lull for a few days, before it resumed as before."

That is very close to what happened here. On 3 July 2026, Checkers told residents that riders had been blocked from using our street as a shortcut unless delivering there. The data showed no reduction.

This is not an argument against delivery

Some replies in the Reddit thread pushed back: complaining about noise is a privilege, or residents should stop ordering deliveries. That misses the point.

Nobody here is asking for delivery to end, or for riders to lose work. Riders are often the people with the least say over which bike they ride or how it is maintained. The decisions that matter sit with the companies that run the service:

• Routing: keep through-traffic on main roads when a residential street is not the destination. On our street, the main-road alternative costs about the same time.
• Quieter bikes: phase out the loudest models and enforce working exhausts. Electric bikes are already used by some delivery services, and Shoprite itself trialled electric delivery vehicles in late 2023 before deciding they were "not yet" viable.
• Accountability: answer residents' complaints, and show evidence when a fix is claimed.

If this is happening on your street

You are not imagining it, and you are not the only one. Written, dated records make a difference. Our community reporting guide explains how to document what you hear, and the Take Action page lists where to send it.

Each complaint on its own is easy to ignore. Together they show a pattern that Checkers Sixty60 and Pingo cannot credibly treat as one unhappy household.