Car club cars just three minutes away

Car clubs offer residents an environmentally-friendly and cost-effective alternative to owning a car.  To allow more residents to take advantage of the benefits, the Council has increased the number of car club bays in the borough from 97 to 200.  The move will give every resident a car club parking bay within a three-minute walk of their home. 

The council knows that people are more likely to join a car club if there is a dedicated parking bay nearby, and the environmental arguments in favour of increasing the number of on-street parking bays for car club vehicles are compelling. Fewer private cars and more car club members will lead to lower C02 emissions, less traffic congestion and reduced demand for parking spaces.

The non-environmental argument in favour of increasing the number of bays is equally compelling. A report commissioned by Transport for London (TfL) entitled Attitudes towards car clubs found that proximity of car club vehicles to users’ homes was crucial to their level of satisfaction with the service.

By increasing the number of on-street car club bays by 103 spaces, Kensington and Chelsea Council has effectively brought a car club vehicle to within a three-minute walk of every resident’s home. This expansion will give the borough’s residents the largest and densest network of car club bays in the UK.

The car club scheme in Kensington and Chelsea is operated by three companies, CityCarClub, StreetCar and ZipCar, which receive no financial aid from the Council.
Once a person becomes a car club member, he or she is able to book one of a range of vehicles under a 'pay-as-you-go' tariff. Members can use vehicles for as little as 30 minutes at a time or for a week or more.

The scheme has been operating for a number of years. In 2007 it was expanded from seven on-street bays run by City Car Club to 97 bays shared between the three companies now involved. The expansion allocated bays as evenly as possible to ensure that the operators were competing on a level playing field. 
No residents’ parking bays have been sacrificed as a result of the expansion, with the 103 new bays all being converted from existing pay and display bays.

In order to ensure competition between operators, the Council has split the first 50 per cent of the new bays equally between the operators, with the remaining bays allocated in proportion to the operators’ share of the total number of active members in the borough.  An active member is defined as one who has used a car club car in the past six months. This method of allocating the bays will ensure the most efficient use of kerbside space.

The 2007 expansion came with a condition that the operators had to supply  the Council with information so that their performance could be monitored.  This information has now given the Council reliable data on changes in car ownership and membership numbers.
The cost of increasing the number of car club bays to 103 is being met entirely by the car club operators. They also pay an annual fee for the car club permit which depends on the environmental performance of the car club vehicle. The more efficient the vehicle in terms of CO2 and particulate emissions, the less the permit costs.

One of the main advantages of the expanded car club scheme is that it will reduce the number of cars on the road and in private ownership, reducing parking demand and traffic congestion.

In the current economic climate, car clubs also provide residents with a cost-effective alternative to owning their own car.  The costs of running a car, such as road tax, MOT, insurance, maintenance, are often forgotten, but add up to a considerable sum. Car clubs include all of those costs in an hourly rate of around £6. A car club member who gives up a private car saves an estimated £1,800 per year.

According to surveys undertaken by StreetCar, Zipcar and City Car Club, 11 per cent of car club members said they had disposed of a car after joining the scheme, which equates to each car club being responsible for four existing cars being sold.  In addition, 55 per cent of car club members said they had decided not to buy a car after joining the scheme.

Many other car club members have also reduced their private car usage as a result of joining a club. A TfL study showed that residents who used their car on average of 64 days a year before joining a car club reduced that to just 41 days after becoming a member

What do you think?

Would you want to join a car club? Would you dispose of your car in favour of becoming a car club member?  Do you think the Council should increase the number of car club bays further? Tell us what you think by emailing rbkcdirect@rbkc.gov.uk