Phil Ellis, CEO, Beryl

Half of Beryl’s bike and scooter customers are riding to and from rail and bus connections. Despite the potential to introduce lots of sophisticated and expensive things, it turns out that getting the most simple thing right makes the biggest difference.

Beryl, explained Phil, is a bike share and scooter share company, operating in cities including three big rail cities – Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. Just over half (51%) of Beryl’s customers use the system to get to public transport. In some cities that might be bus led, in others, it’s rail. The docking station at Watford Junction is one of the most popular docking stations in the country. We know that a lot of the people are using the system already to get to the rail network.

We pretty much always partner with the local authority and often they have a desire for digital integrated ticketing. But we’ve found this to be a distraction to the real prize which is linking our customers to trains and buses, because the thing that has been most successful, simply, has been the space to get people on to the bike.

The other thing we struggle with is there’s a fear that bikes will get in the way – station managers worry about the clutter and it takes ages to change this perception. But once we do get a docking station in somewhere that’s relevant, I don’t think we’ve… I was going to say ever… we’ve very very rarely had any sort of issue with things being in the way, with bikes or scooters being taken beyond where they should be.

Building long term, sophisticated ticketing with local authorities is complicated. Solent and the West Midlands are making progress. But the thing that’s actually led to the increase in the use of bikes and scooters to get to the station – that 51% of our rides – is literally putting it right there in front of people.

We’ve got a bunch of docking stations going in right outside of Birmingham New Street station, which I think is going to be really interesting one for us. Traditionally the bike share docking station has been a bit out of the way, but at New Street it’s directly in the eyeline. We’re keeping a really careful eye on that and want to see how much more than 51% we can get in Birmingham.

Despite lots of sophisticated and expensive, things, the simple thing is what’s most important.