Car sharing in London

moove2london on 10 Nov 2009

Following on from our recent Driving in London post, we’re now going to discuss the benefits of joining a car sharing club in London. For those that have never heard of the concept, a car sharing club allows you to become a member of a club and ‘borrow’ one of a range of vehicles from your nearest parking bay location. You can borrow a car for under an hour, or for several months at a time.

Streetcar is one such firm that operates this car sharing service in London. Registering for either £59.50 for 1 year or £99 for 2 years, provides you with full membership including fully comprehensive insurance, 24/7 breakdown and recovery support, support team available 365 days per year and a Streetcard and PIN which you’ll need to operate the immobiliser on the car that you’re driving. Streetcar also, amazingly, absorbs all Congestion Charge fees accrued during your booking.

Once you’re registered you can book a car from dozens of different locations scattered all over London. You can either book over the phone or over the Internet and bookings can be changed up to 4 hours in advance. The pricing for each journey depends on the length of time you require the car for.

With your booking, you’ll receive 30 miles of free fuel during the first calendar day of booking. Unless you’re planning an out-of-town trip, this is more than adequate for most Londoners. In short, Streetcar will save you money if you’re the type of driver that only requires a car for short periods of time once or twice a week to pop to the supermarket. If you commute to work every day, then it’s probably not for you.

Aside from the money-saving aspects of using a car sharing scheme in London, there are also significant advantages to the environment. Streetcar claims to have taken 20,000 privately owned cars off the road since launching. It has also saved more than 100,000 tonnes of C02 through reduced driving.

If you’re considering buying a car to drive in London, but aren’t sure whether or not it’s worth it, then why not try a car sharing scheme for a year first to see how much you really require a car. You’ll probably save money in the meantime.

Although we’ve used Streetcar as an example in this post, there are other schemes that operate, such as City Car Club or Liftshare which is slightly different as it matches up people who are taking a similar journey.