‘There is a crack in everything,” as Leonard Cohen once put it. “That’s
how the light gets in.” We cracked with the arrival of the annual repair
estimate for our L-reg Renault Espace and that was precisely when we saw the
light. Instead of paying £1,200 to keep it on the road or trading it in for
a newer model, why not finally get rid of the thing?
After all, we live in a capital city with increasingly predictable buses and,
most of the time, a pretty good Underground system. And maybe we could check
out one of those car clubs or get on the insurance of a neighbour’s car for
emergencies.
Of course, like everyone else, we wanted to try to reduce our carbon
footprint, but until we stumbled on an online calculator we hadn’t realised
you could be paid so much to go green. Or, to put it less self-righteously,
just how much money you save by getting rid of your car. Factor in
insurance, MoT, annual repairs, fuel bills and depreciation – admittedly not
much in the case of our antique people carrier – and we were spending more
than £3,000 a year.
And so we opted out. Instead of wearily accepting the latest estimate to get
through the MoT, we executed an ideological three-point turn: rather than
pay the man in the greasy overalls to give us our car back I tricked him
into paying us to keep it himself. Or maybe he tricked me with his best
offer of £700, but at least it meant we were starting our car-less life
nearly £4,000 up . . . on paper at least.
But walking away from the garage twirling a fat wad of crisp twenties had
nothing on the feeling of actually leaving the car behind, finally sloughing
off the burden of scratched metal, deadly fumes and endless bills. Add in a
frisson of middle-class political do-goodery and all we had to do was work
out how to get the shopping home.
First step was a local car club, which we discovered, to our surprise, had 29
vehicles located in roadside bays within four miles of our house. Membership
of car clubs varies: some charge a monthly membership fee and an hourly
rate, others levy no subscription but charge a higher hourly rate.
CityCarClub, the first one we joined, charged £21 a month for two drivers and
promptly mailed us two customised electronic swipe cards. You book the car
you need online, calculating in half hours how long you will need it. If the
closest car geographically is already taken, you book the next closest. Come
the appointed hour, you walk to the car, swipe your card over the windscreen
and it unlocks the driver’s door. You punch your personal code into the
on-board computer which then clears you for takeoff.
There’s no pretending it’s as hassle-free as grabbing your keys and jumping in
your own car – it takes planning, involves a short walk and necessitates
remembering yet another password. On the upside, however, you are driving a
spotlessly clean and modern motor for about a fiver an hour. Never again
need you fret about MoT, road tax, insurance or whether the brakes need
servicing.
Now it’s true that a family of five leaves a little to be desired in the area
of forward planning: public transport will occasionally deposit a teenager
in an obscure suburb late at night, the odd hospital dash becomes more
complicated and the trip to rural relatives is not quite as spontaneous as
once it was. But as well as taking up the generous invitation of neighbours
to be added to their car insurance for emergencies, we joined Streetcar, a
second car club, this one with free membership and a pool of shiny new VW
Golfs.
Two years on, most weeks we forget what owning a car was like. But while we’ve
never walked, biked, bussed and trained so much, it would be misleading not
to acknowledge the odd frustration, the occasional low-level rumble of
domestic tension. Sometimes every car is booked, sometimes we need one right
now – not after booking it and walking to it – sometimes it’s hissing with
rain as the kids head out of the door to school. But we’ve acquired
previously unrealised Zen-like qualities at the bus stop and can always
afford to jump in a cab. (Did I mention that £4,000?)
Our car-owning democracy has successfully erected an apparently insuperable
psychological barrier to the notion of not having a car at our beck and call
– even “dark green” friends consider it an inconvenient truth too far. But
such is rising concern at the health and environmental impacts from a
car-centric culture that the idea of giving them up is now taking off in the
country as well as the city.
John Pritchard, a research assistant at Sheffield University, travels into
work from the village of Hadfield, near Glossop in Derbyshire. Until last
year he needed two cars – one for his wife and three kids and one to travel
solo on the beautiful 25-mile trip along Snake Pass to Sheffield.
Through the online carsharing community Liftshare he discovered Iain
Galbraith, who lives in the same village and travels the same route – also
alone – to an architectural firm in Sheffield. Now they save a small fortune
by travelling together in Galbraith’s car while the Pritchards have
downsized to one vehicle.
“You have to consider each other if, for example, you need to stay late at
work,” says Pritchard. “But it comes with practice and you soon develop a
way to manage it.”
Driven as much by poor public transport links as environmental concerns, car
sharing through sites such as Village CarShare is even taking off in remote
towns and villages. It’s not just cheaper, it also reduces local pollution
and parking problems. E-mail and text have simplified logistical problems,
which explains why Liftshare now has more than 165,000 members.
The idea took Carol Searle in Exmouth almost by surprise. She’s been car
sharing on her 11-mile daily commute to Exeter for four years. “It began
with two of us car sharing once a week and then became four of us sharing
almost every day,” says Searle.
Her co-travellers, who met up through Devon Car Share, are now advertising for
a new member. “Often people are put off because they only see the
inconvenience of not having their own car just when they want it,” says
Searle. “But you don’t realise until you do it just how smooth it becomes
after a short while.” And if someone, say, misses work with illness?
“There’s always a way around the complications.”
While Britain has the worst congestion and longest commuting times in the
European Union, most of us have yet to cotton on to the fact that
technologies such as mobile phones and e-mail have leapfrogged the
complications that made car sharing seem like too much hassle.
With 38m empty seats on British roads every day, car clubs and car sharing
slash congestion and pollution. According to the Department for Transport, a
successful carsharing scheme reduces commuter traffic by a fifth, while car
club members reduce the miles they drive by almost half.
So don’t crack up at the cost of keeping a car on the road. The truth may be
more convenient than you realised – it could save both your pocket and your
planet.
