Mark Sinclair’s Blog: 6 February 2008

It’s good to keep in touch. And always nice to get an email from Rosie Winterton the Transport Minister.

Her latest missive is about car sharing. We used to call it ‘cadging a lift’ but I suppose that our leaders feel that ‘car sharing’ has a more deterministic ring to it. Makes it sound like a successful Government drive to ‘impact on’ congestion, or global warming, or mobility deprivation (that is, people who don’t own cars).

Since Rosie’s boss Gordon is apparently staring gloomily into an £8 billion hole that’s opened up in next year’s Government finances, I think there may be some covert reasons behind this sudden move to extol the virtues of ‘multiple automotive occupancy on a free-associative basis’, or whatever term social scientists use for the practice of getting your mum to drive you to work.

Eight billion notes isn’t all that much greater than the huge and ever-growing subsidy handed to our supposedly privatised rail network, where a £700 monthly season ticket doesn’t even guarantee you a seat after a hard day at the office.

With public transport infrastructure gobbling up gargantuan chunks of taxpayers’ money for such poor returns, you could see the light bulbs going on over ministers’ heads when they realised that there are literally millions of free seats going begging every day in cars. Bingo!

Their epiphany surely preceded the publication of a new report from Rosie Winterton’s department, about Public Experiences of Car Sharing.

Its findings can be summed up as: “much nicer than taking the bus, thanks.”

60% of people surveyed had car-shared (defined as giving or receiving a lift with someone outside their household) in the month prior to the survey. The most popular reason was that it was more convenient and cheaper than the alternatives.

Absolutely. 22% of sharers mentioned problems with public transport. They didn’t like using it, or it took too long, or didn’t go to the right place or was too expensive. How many businesses, looking at their mobility strategies, can relate to that I wonder?

But while our cash-strapped Government dreams about a marvellous new cheap-seat alternative to giving us a proper public transport system, is the fleet world missing a trick?

Only 5% of respondents to the survey had shared lifts with a colleague travelling on business. Just 2% of respondents said their employer offered them an incentive to car share and a tiny 1% were in a formal lift sharing scheme run by their employer.

Granted, there are plenty of cultural, logistical and risk-related impediments to introdducing large-scale lift-sharing for business purposes. But the rising cost of fuel will surely make the idea more attractive.

14% of respondents said they shared lifts to and from work – mainly to go home (yes, I had to think about that one for a moment too).

The latest Office of National Statistics Family Spending survey shows that petrol and diesel are now the second biggest item in the average weekly budget after mortgages or rents. Record fuel prices are reportedly hurting low income families. Thousands of companies that rely on people commuting to work by car could therefore begin to feel the pinch unless oil prices take a tumble – which seems highly unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Perhaps now is the time to start planning a car sharing scheme for your business.