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Friday 23 August 2013

More Progress on Car Clubs

A German company appears to be driving further progress in car clubs.  Car2go offer minute by minute rental, unlike the hourly rental currently prevalent?  You also supposed to be able to park them anywhere in a home zone, and use them without pre-booking.  I can certainly imagine the greater flexibility being attractive to many people.

It surprises me therefore that they claim London is actually quite difficult to break into.  Brent, following Labour's election in 2010, has (I thought) an extremely pro car club policy.  We encourage the use of car club cars by Brent employees.  More strikingly, we allow car club cars to park anywhere within a CPZ.  This seemed such a huge advantage when we introduced it along with emission based permits in 2011, that I was worried it would lead to enormous congestion.  That does not appear to have happened however,

The advantages of car clubs are enormous.  They cut congestion by reducing the numbers of vehicles.    They reduce pollution by encouraging forms of transport other than the car.  They cut the cost to the car user enormously.

I am convinced that they will be seen as a major part of London's transport solutions in a few years time.

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