BCP Council and Beryl win major Municipal Journal award

BCP Council and Beryl have won the 2023 Municipal Journal (MJ) Award for the UK’s Best Transport Decarbonisation Project. The national award was announced at the gala event at the Park Plaza in Central London on Friday 23 June, presented by BBC News at Ten anchor, Huw Edwards. The MJ Awards are considered the highest level of recognition in the UK local authority community.

BCP Council and Beryl have won the 2023 Municipal Journal (MJ) Award for the UK’s Best Transport Decarbonisation Project.

The national award was announced at the gala event at the Park Plaza in Central London on Friday 23 June, presented by BBC News at Ten anchor, Huw Edwards. The MJ Awards are considered the highest level of recognition in the UK local authority community.

In order to reduce congestion carbon emissions and encourage the use of healthy and sustainable forms of transport, BCP Council tendered for a Dockless Bike Share operator for a 5-year term. This contract was awarded to Beryl in 2019.

The bicycle hire scheme was introduced to help encourage a modal shift in transport, away from short car and vehicle journeys to more sustainable forms of transport. Congestion in the BCP Council region is particularly high and for example traffic research has shown that around 7000 commuters drive their cars on their own, less than 2km into Bournemouth each day. The scheme is aimed at reducing this congestion and the pollution it creates by offering an alternative, easily accessible and sustainable mode of transport around of area.

The scheme has been a great success with demand far exceeding expectation. Almost 198,000 users have undertaken more than 1.55 million journeys since the launch in Summer 2019, covering a distance of over 5.5 million kilometres.

Close collaboration between the partners has ensured the delivery of an innovative, safe, well managed scheme which in turn has provided the key outcome of encouraging modal shift away from cars and on to sustainable transport, with almost a quarter of all Beryl journeys replacing a car, van, taxi or motorbike journey.

On top of this, 35% of users have returned to cycling after a break and 47% are now cycling more often indicating that the desired long term behavioral change has occurred.

Beryl has recently celebrated its four year anniversary as the service provider in the BCP area and its distinctive green bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters are now a familiar site across the region.

The hire scheme has grown over the intervening four years with new and innovative forms of transport such as e-scooters and e-bikes being introduced to the hire fleet. Over 188,000 users have undertaking 1.5 million journeys since the launch in June 2019, covering over 5 million kilometres.

The main objective of the scheme is to encourage a change in travel mode, away from cars and other vehicles to more sustainable forms of transport, an aim which is being achieved. Using on-app questionnaires at the end of each trip, Beryl reports that 33% of journeys have replaced a motorised vehicle journey. Also, 35% of users have reported returning to cycling and 47% are now cycling more often as a result of using the Beryl hire service.