It's a transitive verb according to dictionary.com. Near is an adverb, adjective, preposition and intransitive verb, so although "nearing" sounds a bit like the ghastly American practice of verbing their nouns, that's not where it comes from.
Picking up my bike end of month, will be getting the full Akro system early next year. It looks the d's b's. Have heard from NippyNormans that there will not now be a road legal version of this system , so gonna go all illegal (again).