Car sharing and car clubs
Discover a more sustainable way to travel by car
What is car sharing?
When two or more people arrange to share a car: something many of us do on a regular basis with friends and family without even thinking about it.
Online services such as Liftshare.com and Carpooling.com make it easier to car share. Drivers can search for people to give lifts to, while passengers can search for lifts to any destination in the UK. The cost of the travel is shared.
What are the benefits of car sharing?
Considerable. Reduced costs, reduced congestion and pollution and improved access in areas with limited public transport.
What are the problems we face?
Traffic has increased by over 60% since 1980.
Cars are the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Congestion costs the UK £19 billion a year.
Public transport costs are rising.
Every day there are 10 million empty seats on our roads.
What difference can car sharing make?
If average car occupancy were to increase by half - with 2.37 persons per car rather than 1.58 - it would lead to a one-third fall in traffic.
If there was an increase of 10% - with 1.74 persons per car on average - this would reduce traffic on our roads by 9%.
Over half of drivers would share a car to work if there was someone suitable to travel with.
A 10% car occupancy rise would reduce congestion by as much as a doubling rail usage.
What is Carpooling.com?
Carpooling.com is the largest carpooling platform in Europe. It has 3.5 million registered users and transports more than one million people a month. It also offers European carpool options. For more details: http://www.carpooling.com/
What is Liftshare.com?
Liftshare.com is the UK's largest car sharing scheme. Over 500,000 members have joined the network and about 140 million individual journeys on the central database available for sharing. Liftshare.com also provides car sharing schemes to over 500 businesses and communities across the country. For more details: www.liftshare.com/uk/