Car Plus car sharing survey 2009-2010 - shows increased use of rail by members

[whole diary]

[A V Lowe]

Car sharing clubs are a rapidly growing feature, with 2 major operators in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) (City Car Club / Streetcar) and an online operation where private individuals can offer use of their under used vehicles and get a monthly payment (with a percentage taken to provide admin and insurance).

Car sharing provides a pay-as-you go car available 24/7 from a convenient place near your home, and there are over 2000 vehicles available in the London area, including 7-seaters and vans, costing from under ^5 per hour including a basic fuel/mileage element.  In Germany the rail operator runs this through DB^» (Deutsche Bahn - German State Railway - about) Rent, and the Belgian bus operators offer this as an add-on for bus season tickets, delivering one of the fastest growing car-sharing operations in Europe, and one in which the bus operator has a share, and thus retains revenue from selling the total journey rather than just the bus trip.  Maybe an independent like Reading Buses could take this up?

The survey has some interesting figures - regionally, over 78% of car club members report that they use trains at least once per month, compared the the National Travel Survey figure of 18% of the wider population using a train onece per month.  For bus use the figures are even more impressive with over 90% of car club members using a bus at least once a month and less than 70% of the wider population. 

Car clubs work well when they have a good match of business and private users, and in Leeds one Car Plus example saw a pool car fleet of 3 cars costing ^17,000/year as a leased facility reduced to a ^5,000/year cost of pay as you use for 3 corporate memberships, with the added benefit that a car can be booked at a remote location and the long haul trip made by train - remembering the key advantage that for business travel a car trip is generally a cost to the company, but if you can work on the train the time can be charged to the client!

For the full report http://www.trl.co.uk/online_store/reports_publications/trl_reports/cat_sustainability/report_carplus_annual_survey_of_car_clubs_200910.htm  - Download should be free     

[grahame]

I think I saw a car parking space in Bath (Widcombe - five minutes walk from the station) for a shared car the other week - and indeed with a nice clean modern car there.  But otherwise, car clubs are a new one on me.

Am I correct in reading this that the saving is on the number of vehicles that need to be made / cuts down on a huge stock of cars doing nothing for 99% of the time, rather than cutting down on and combining journeys?  I'm looking to get my head around "ride sharing", "car sharing" and "car pooling".

Edit to add ...

A quick calculation on private motoring

If you drive your car 10,000 miles a year at an average speed on 35 m.p.h., then you're travelling for 285 hours out of 8760.  So you car is parked and out of use for 96.75% of the time ...

If this car has five seats, and on average there are two people in it on a journey, then each seat is in use for transporting someone just 1.3% of the time.

[Phil]

The company I work for is, in common with many others, discouraging car usage by reducing the number of available parking spaces and encouraging car sharing (priority spaces are allocated to cars containing more than one person, etc)

At the same time, again in common with many other organisations, it is reducing the number of available desks and encouraging flexible working, alternative working patterns, family-friendly-working, working-from-home, etc. etc.

To my mind these two aims are completely and utterly at odds with one another.

I car-shared for most of the 1980s, i.e. long before it was trendy or fashionable, with three or four other people (it varied) and I know from experience that the one and only priority for anyone thinking of joining a car share scheme is ROUTINE. Every person has to work the same fixed hours almost every day, week in, week out. It's no good saying to the others "I think I'll skip breakfast tomorrow, leave at 7.15 and then leave work a half hour early this afternoon so I can catch the start of the football", as that's a sure-fire recipe for being sat outside someone's house waiting for them to finish in the bathroom the next morning. It's no good saying "listen guys, I want to stay on and finish this report I'm working on so is it OK if we leave at 5:45 today?" as you can guarantee it will be hugely inconvenient for another member of the car pool. You can't say "Look, I know it's my turn to drive tomorrow, but I'm going to be working from home again - hope that's OK" - because it won't be.

[Brucey]

There used to be* a City Car Club car at the end of my road in Bristol, with a dedicated parking space.  It hardly ever seemed to move.

I was put off by the membership fee.  ^50 per year, plus ^10 per month "young driver insurance premium".  I understand that a contract with my university would reduce the annual fee to ^25 whilst I'm studying there.

Then with charges of around ^5 per hour, it became too expensive.  A trip to the supermarket would cost at least ^10.  Obviously much cheaper than having your own car if you don't drive regularly, but its much cheaper to either have the shopping delivered or get on the bus.

* = past tense as I don't live on that street anymore - the car is probably still there

[Tim]

I am not surprised that car-club members use the train more than the average motorist.  But does correlation imply causality or are light users of cars just likely to join car clubs and catch trains?

One feature about car clubs is that you pay per hour or per mile for use of the car depretriation of the car is factored into this rate.  This means that a drive to the local shopping centre and back carries an upfrount cost of a fair few quid.  If you own a car you probably pay more but the visible upfront costs are very slight (petrol only).  When faced with the upfront cost, bus and train fares do sometimes start to look more attractive than they ever do to the car owner.  If all motorists are eventually moved to a road pricing scheme then even car owners will be faced with an upfront cost for each journey.  I would be hoped that cometitively priced train fares would compete well with these (if theere are any competitively priced train fares left that is)

[A V Lowe]

Phil, like most people in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) has been confused by the incorrect use of the term car sharing to describe ride (or lift) sharing (only in the UK - everywhere else understands what car sharing is, and the parallel bike sharing - soon to start in London and running in Reading (albeit on a very limited scale). 

As noted if you base your supermarket shopping on spending 2 hours doing it and shopping at a supermarket far away from where you live then the cost is going to be more than ^5, but those using car club vehicles take a year or two to refine their purchase pattern, and in doing this may work out ways hire the car club vehicle after the shopping is completed if they do shop at a distance. 

The detail I picked up on was that after a year of membership the members move to higher levels of bus, train and bike use, and many may well be coming from the full-time car owners population who make relatively few train journeys, and they represent a new audience to buy rail travel, as well as rail travellers able to make more trips with a  personal vehicle because of the convenience of a vehicle on arrival, and less likely to increase their car use.

Other rail administrations have worked out that by delivering the immediacy of a pay as you go car to add to the taxi and other ways to connect with the train, they are offering a complete product and capturing the revenue for the total journey, through full or part-ownership of the car club, bike hire and other operations which provide that service.  Stagecoach has, to date delivered the most first effective UK example with their folding bike leasing arrangements at Waterloo.  This offers a faster and more convenient connection between station and office than using the tube at around half the price if you are prepared to cycle, and has rapidly been fully subscribed.  In Belgium the fastest growing operation is closely linked to combined selling of bus/tram season tickets and car club membership.