Beryl BTN Bikes

The BTN Bikeshare scheme is relaunching with Beryl on 31 March 2023.

Phase 1 of the scheme’s relaunch will see around 75 e-bikes in operation. There'll be 19 hubs along the seafront and between Brighton and Hove stations.

The number of e-bikes will increase to 125 during this first phase. Beryl will bring more bikes and hubs into service in the coming months.

The current fleet is temporary. The rollout of the permanent fleet across an expanded zone will begin in early summer. We'll announce this date once the bikes have been delivered for assembly and testing by Beryl’s team.

Cheaper pedal-only bikes and more e-bikes will be available, and more hubs will be reactivated in this expanded zone. This second phase will mean a wider usage for different journey purposes will once again be possible.  

Bikes and hubs will continue to be phased in over the rest of the summer, and the scheme will be city-wide by the end of September. A wider range of tariffs will be available. We'll make more announcements on this soon.  

In the next few months, we'll be consulting on 15 new hubs to add to the network to make the scheme coverage city-wide. The total fleet will be 780, with 468 e-bikes and 312 pedal-only bikes. This is an increase of almost 200 more bikes than the previous Bikeshare scheme. 

How to use a Beryl BTN Bike

To hire a Beryl BTN Bike, you'll need to download the Beryl app.

The app will allow you to plan, book and pay for your journey. It's available for free download on Google Play and the App Store.

You can view the Beryl website to find more information on:

• finding and unlocking a bike
• where you can ride
• how to pause a ride
• costs and fees
• restrictions
• how to report issues and contact Beryl

You can also view Beryl's terms and conditions.

Balances from the old BTN Bikeshare scheme

Hourbike operated the BTN Bikeshare scheme from 2017 until December 2022.

They emailed all active accounts with an annual membership purchased before May 2022. They gave users the option to request a refund or donate any unspent credit balance. On 7 November, a ‘push notification’ was also sent to everyone with the SOBI app on their smartphones. 

Refunds closed on Friday 3 February 2023. This was the date when the Hourbike customer service centre closed and five weeks after Hourbike withdrew the last bikes from service.

Refunds

Hourbike paid all refunds directly to SOBI customers using the bank details on their registered accounts.

Hourbike provided us with information on the individual refunds and donations. They could not share personal data, such as names or bank details, due to data protection rules.They have now deleted all banking details.

Donations

Donations from account holders varied between £12 and £52. We topped these up using our reserves from the share of annual surpluses in previous years. Each Charity received £100. The nominated charities were Brighton Bike Hub, Pedal People and Cranks.

Unclaimed balances

We used any unclaimed funds to help support the repurposing of the retired bike fleet. This helped fund the cost of:

• converting bikes for continued use elsewhere as private bikes
• removing reusable parts
• recycling bikes damaged beyond repair
• protecting jobs by covering operational losses due to technical issues in the final three months of the scheme

Find out more about what happened to the refurbished BikeShare bikes.

Transfer of balances to Beryl

Data protection rules mean Hourbike are not able to transfer membership data to the new operator Beryl.  Hourbike will email all customers who were recently active in the old scheme with a sign-up link for the Beryl BTN Bike hire scheme.