Car Sharing (North East Scotland)
The final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S3M-7504, in the name of Alison McInnes, on getabout and liftshare. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes that, following the first ever liftshare week, membership of the UK-wide car-sharing network has now exceeded 400,000; further notes that car sharing, as well as bringing environmental benefits, can save participants money through shared travelling costs; congratulates liftshare on its recent success in the Contribution to the Community category at the Nectar Small Business Awards; considers outstanding the work of Getabout, a partnership between Nestrans, Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire councils, local universities and other organisations, in promoting better transport choices, including car sharing, in the north east, and believes that encouraging car sharing and other more sustainable transport options can play a key part in helping the transport sector to meet its share of Scotland’s climate change reduction targets.
17:49
First, I thank the members from all parties who signed my motion and those who have stayed late tonight to debate it. I am grateful to them all.
How can we keep the daily commute convenient and door-to-door yet also cut costs, congestion and carbon? There is one simple but often overlooked answer—lift sharing. I will use this debate to highlight the benefits of lift sharing. I believe that encouraging car sharing and other more sustainable transport options can play a key part in helping the transport sector to meet its share of Scotland’s climate change reduction targets.
We know that the transport sector is one of the big carbon emitters and that more than two thirds of its emissions come from road transport. Although I am glad that there has been steadily growing interest in sustainable transport solutions, I am surprised that one of the simplest and most effective solutions often seems to be overlooked. There is a lack of awareness at the Government level of the role that lift sharing already plays in the mobility mix and its potential to help to overcome many transport issues. It can be especially useful in rural areas, where public transport options are often few and far between.
The Government’s recently published draft report on proposals and policies in relation to climate change makes no reference to the promotion of car sharing, yet increasing its take-up could be one fairly quick and effective solution that is worth pursuing. I have already written to the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure about that omission, and I urge him to establish a clear strategy to determine how lift sharing can be encouraged across Scotland.
The good thing about lift sharing—or car sharing or car pooling, as it is also known—is that it is not just another worthy scheme but one that has an instant effect on people’s wallets. With petrol prices rising by the week and, according to the RAC Foundation, the looming threat of the £8 gallon, the time is ripe to raise awareness of the benefits of car sharing.
Car sharing is a fairly instant way for people to cut their fuel costs. If they find three other people, they pay to go to work only once every four days. In my region, where commutes routinely involve a 40-mile round trip, that is quite a saving. Car sharing is an attractive alternative to single-occupant vehicle travel because of its door-to-door directness and convenience. Aside from the financial savings that are to be made, the main benefit of car sharing is that each person in the car—other than the driver, obviously—potentially represents a vehicle trip removed from the road.
Car sharing reduces travel costs. The average person who shares their daily trip saves around £900 a year. It reduces car traffic, congestion and parking issues. It reduces emissions, of course—the average person who shares their daily trip saves around 1 tonne of CO2 a year. It improves access and reduces exclusion, because for many people there are not always convenient, viable or affordable alternatives to car travel. It also increases social interaction. Interestingly, it improves road safety. Research has shown that people who share cars are 50 per cent less likely to have an accident.
Membership of liftshare, the United Kingdom-wide car-sharing network has now exceeded 400,000, through the operation of 1,346 car-sharing schemes. Liftshare, which is a social enterprise, deserves to be congratulated on that success. Liftshare is the UK’s premier car-sharing organisation and it works with the public and private sectors throughout the UK to set up online journey-matching tools and to help employers to market and monitor schemes.
Lift-share schemes can be private, closed schemes for single employers. In my constituency, organisations such as Aberdeen College, Robert Gordon University, the national health service, the councils, and employers such as Subsea 7 and Taqa Bratani all have schemes. They can also be open schemes at a regional or national level. They help people to find fellow travellers for regular journeys or even for one-off trips. They can even help people who do not have cars. Lift sharing does not need to be the choice for every trip, and people who car share do not need to live near each other. Councils are now encouraging people to use park-and-ride sites to meet up, giving free parking to those who choose to park and share.
I want to highlight an innovative regional scheme in the north-east of Scotland that is partnered with liftshare. The getabout initiative helps people to get from A to B in the Aberdeen city and shire region, which has high levels of commuting and significant congestion. Among other things, that congestion impacts on the effective running of public transport.
At the moment, about 80 per cent of commuter trips in the north-east are single occupant. Realising that that was not sustainable, north east of Scotland transport partnership and its partners set up getabout. The project was developed almost two years ago, and has eight partners across all the large organisations in Aberdeen city and shire. Its aim is to create a better transport network to promote greater choice and sustainable travel. It has developed a common brand under which everyone can run their own events or joint events, and it deals with a range of issues from travel plans to travel awareness activities. Its website is a virtual one-stop shop for information about travel choices, and getabout has taken quite a fun and fresh approach to encouraging people to get about more sustainably. Getabout has also carried out more than 110 events, from business days to road closures during European car-free day.
Recently, getabout has developed an online travel plan building and monitoring tool, which is offered free and allows businesses to write their own travel plans. Another piece of software called iTRACE has been installed to monitor travel plans and provide up-to-date figures on modal shift, carbon reduction and active travel. The information that it gathers will be invaluable in refining and promoting the ideas of the future. Although it is widely used in England, its use is a first for Scotland, and I hope that other regions will be able to follow that lead.
What do we need to do to encourage greater take-up of lift sharing? The Government needs to provide support and leadership, and councils and the private sector should work together to develop or enhance local schemes. We need to keep selling the idea and refreshing the message over the long term.
Concerns about safety and convenience can be easily addressed, and people should be reassured that the service is tried and tested. I would be interested to see a trial of high-occupancy vehicle lanes and the development of more park-and-share sites at strategic locations. Employers can help by earmarking premium parking places for car sharers and providing other incentives. I know of one company that has offered regular users of lift sharing an extra day’s leave per year.
Employers can help to build confidence in their scheme by providing a guaranteed ride home, so that if the driver falls ill, or in the event of an emergency, people can get home. Existing examples show that those guarantees are seldom used and rarely abused, but they can be used to help to persuade potential car sharers.
The transport sector is facing many challenges, but the need to reduce carbon and costs cannot be ignored. Looking forward, the Government has less money to invest in large-scale modal shift projects. These small-scale, softer options are cost effective and quick to implement, and they could play a significant role in bringing about the type of change that we want to see. I hope that others agree.
17:56
I congratulate Alison McInnes on bringing the debate to the chamber. I know of her very personal interest in the matter over the long haul, as she was previously chair of the north east of Scotland transport partnership.
I have on my parliamentary desk two mugs with the getabout logo on them, because I attended the launch at Inverurie. It is fair to say that the best car journey is the one you do not make, but it is necessary to make car journeys. Sharing our journeys with others in rural areas is economic and addresses climate issues.
Alison McInnes referred to travel planning, for which there is a range of options. Traveline Scotland is now a well-established part of the landscape; I used it to find out how to get from my rural home in Banffshire to the Burns supper in West Kilbride at which I am speaking on Saturday night. I think that there are seven legs to the journey, but members can imagine the difficulties if I had not had access to automated ways of planning it.
In the old days there were other ways in which we could avoid driving our own cars. As a student in Aberdeen I used to hitch-hike regularly to get home to Cupar at the end of each term. It was not to save the planet, of course—it was mainly to save my wallet. Many of us used to do that, but it is no longer a popular way of doing things as there are real concerns about safety.
A structured approach that gives people the opportunity in a controlled way to join up with others who are making similar journeys is something that we must encourage. Every time we get two people in a car there is a 50 per cent saving in costs and climate impacts.
Some significant ideas that are relevant include giving priority parking to car sharers. That type of facility would increase the attractiveness of the option and be worth publicising. Car pools organised by employers are another way of ensuring that we make the most of the commute that must be done.
Here in Edinburgh, on the very doorsteps of Parliament, we can see cars from the Edinburgh city car club, which is another part of the package. A Labour councillor with whom I worked in my previous role has given up his car, and was able to attest that he was saving some £3,000 a year and suffering no disadvantage whatsoever. I hope that such schemes will be extended across Scotland in due course, because if we have fewer vehicles on our roads there will be less impact on the infrastructure of our roads, less need to spend money on maintaining them and less need to invest in creating additional capacity. The benefits come at a primary level and at many secondary and tertiary levels as well.
It is important that we look at our successes. Co-operation between Aberdeen city and Aberdeenshire now happens in a range of areas. We should look to that co-operation and ensure that the lessons are more widely learned. On that basis, it is timely that Alison McInnes has introduced the debate—and I will be interested to hear what the minister has to say about the future of such schemes.
18:00
I, too, congratulate Alison McInnes on securing this evening’s debate and on setting out so clearly the advantages of lift sharing.
We talk about transport a lot in the chamber—and in committee. I think—or at least I hope—that we are all aware of the pressing need to decrease the level of greenhouse gas emissions, especially from the driving of private vehicles. Individuals need to be persuaded out of their cars and encouraged to make more use of public transport. However, that is often quite difficult in more outlying areas when public transport is not easily available—and by that I mean some urban areas as well as outlying rural areas.
People also need to choose more environmentally friendly cars when they choose to drive, but one quick way in which to cut emissions—and save money—is to share cars. I congratulate liftshare and getabout in the north-east on this worthwhile initiative. Such work can be replicated by many employers and groups of employers. Many already have travel plans that include car-sharing arrangements as well as active travel such as walking and cycling, which are healthy as well as good for the environment. The University of Dundee is one exemplar of such good practice and I spoke about it in our debate on active travel in June.
I must, however, express a concern about safety. There are real concerns about the safety of hitch-hiking, which I do not think any of us would advise people to try nowadays, but there is also a slight concern about the safety of car sharing. It must be done with some caution and it would be wise to follow the safety guidelines for sharing. People can share with people they know, and women can ensure that they share a car with other women. Those things will help to give people confidence when they start out in car sharing.
If people share cars when they give children a lift to school, that might cut the jams that occur in front of some primary schools. Again, however, there would have to be safety measures in place to ensure, for example, that children were strapped in safely when they were not travelling with their parents. Perhaps the minister could comment on the safety aspects of car sharing and take on board the need for car sharing to be included in the RPP, as Alison McInnes suggested.
The traffic Scotland website has local links for car sharing and a calculator for CO2 emissions. There is a pressing need for a campaign to encourage eco-driving, including reducing speeds to reduce petrol consumption. We should all be aware that changes in driving style can help the planet as well as the pocket, and people can make even more savings if they car share.
Looking at the liftshare website for the north-east, it seems easy to register. Perhaps with a bit more publicity this year there will be an increase from the current 400,000 members by the next liftshare week.
18:04
I, too, congratulate Alison McInnes on securing the debate and acknowledge her work on sustainable travel in the north-east for many years; she was deeply involved with the north east of Scotland transport partnership—Nestrans—as an Aberdeenshire councillor.
Not many people will know this, but on our train journey down from Aberdeen yesterday, Alison McInnes and I were temporarily stranded in Kirkcaldy due to a signal failure. The chamber will be pleased to know that First ScotRail provided an emergency bus link to Edinburgh fairly quickly—and I must say that its customer care was exemplary—but I experienced at first hand the opportunities that can exist for journey sharing when a fellow passenger from Aberdeen offered to get me more speedily to Edinburgh in a vehicle that he arranged to pick us up. I accepted his offer to ensure that I got to my meeting on time. Such opportunities clearly exist, and in this era of modern technology a perfect real-time link between commuters could become the ideal way forward for reducing car use.
As has been mentioned, liftshare and getabout have already helped individuals to travel more sustainably by sharing their journeys to and from work. The online network has helped to match people with similar journeys so that they can travel more easily together, saving them money as well as helping the environment by cutting their carbon footprints.
As Alison McInnes said, the social enterprise liftshare has gone from strength to strength, and I pay tribute to all those involved in building it up to include more than 400,000 members in a United Kingdom-wide car-sharing network—a great achievement that I hope will grow and grow.
Getabout, which is a partnership that involves eight bodies—Aberdeen City Council and Aberdeenshire Councils, the two universities, Aberdeen College, NHS Grampian, the Energy Saving Trust and the Dyce Transportation Management Organisation—has also made significant progress in promoting better transport choices, including car sharing, across the north-east. I am grateful to Alison McInnes for explaining so clearly how it operates.
Liftshare and getabout clearly demonstrate that we can take positive steps to reduce car use by developing local car-share networks. In the north-east, the statistics speak for themselves. At present, 80 per cent of commuting cars have only one occupant. Half of all car trips are less than five miles. When my children were small, groups of parents took part in school runs—each family took one day a week. Now, I see a stream of cars, often four-by-fours, go to my local school with one child per vehicle. That is surely a retrograde step that should be reversed if we really want to ease congestion and combat climate change.
The MSPs in the chamber who represent the north-east will be only too aware of how reducing the number of cars, especially at rush hour, would help to address local transport difficulties, such as the huge tailbacks that we experience at the notorious Haudagain roundabout.
With the current high fuel prices and the impact that they are having, especially in rural areas, on top of other challenges to household budgets, we should be hearing about the promotional material published by getabout—Alison McInnes quoted some of it—which states:
“Car sharing can make a real difference to your fuel bills—find 3 other people and you only pay to go to work every 4 days!”
For those trying to cut down on their journeys, it says:
“if you live to the North or West of Aberdeen meet at Bridge of Don, Ellon or Kingswells park and ride and share from there! Parking is free as well.”
I congratulate Alison McInnes on an informative debate. I hope that increased awareness of car-sharing networks will help people to travel more sustainably by sharing their journeys to work and that large employers especially will look at what positive steps can be taken within their businesses to help promote better transport choices, including car sharing, for all their employees.
18:08
I thank Alison McInnes, not least for achieving one of the aims of her speech, which was to bring the benefits of car sharing to the attention of the chamber and, we hope, a wider audience. I agree that car sharing helps not only to combat climate change but to reduce both congestion, as we heard from Nanette Milne, and the participants’ travel costs, as we heard from Stewart Stevenson. In a period of exceptional fuel prices, that can be no bad thing.
The Scottish ministers are supportive of car sharing. It is salient to note that the average car occupancy in Scotland is around 1.6 persons. It is clear that we are not only very attached to our cars but, in many cases, reluctant to share them. It is therefore encouraging that companies such as liftshare and getabout in the north-east of Scotland are enjoying success, and I add my personal congratulations to liftshare for its success in the Nectar Business small business awards in 2010. I hope that both organisations will continue to thrive in the future.
The motion rightly states that
“encouraging car sharing and other more sustainable transport options can play a key part in helping the transport sector to meet its share of Scotland’s climate change reduction targets.”
Obviously, the question is what we in the Government are doing to bring about the level of behavioural change that will encourage more drivers to leave their cars at home or share them.
Our draft climate change report on proposals and policies, which we have heard about and which the Parliament recently considered, includes three interlinked packages of proposals that, together, will help to ensure that our world-leading climate change targets are met. Those packages are on reducing the need to travel, widening transport choices and driving more efficiently.
The first package, as the name suggests, aims to reduce the amount of travel through, for example, more home and flexi-working provision by employers. We are also exploring how the concept of shared community hubs with modern information and communications technologies might reduce the need to commute. The third package concerns how we can best encourage drivers to take advantage of the 5 to 10 per cent fuel savings that are inherent in improved driving techniques, and the second package—on widening transport choices—includes a variety of measures that range from improved cycling and walking infrastructure to improved public transport provision. It also includes our proposals to encourage the formation of more car clubs and for more intense delivery of travel planning for public and private sector organisations.
Stewart Stevenson mentioned car clubs in relation to Edinburgh. Car clubs and car-sharing schemes have a similar aim. Club members can access cars as and when they need them rather than have the temptation sitting in their driveway every morning. This year, we have made available £200,000 to encourage the formation of car clubs in communities of fewer than 25,000 people. We will look very closely at how support for car clubs can be extended in later years.
Our car-sharing plans are locked up in our travel planning proposals, of course. Travel planning advice to organisations includes free consultancy help to make the best use of, for example, flexi-working, which I have mentioned, teleconferencing, public transport, and cycling and walking to work. During the recent period of severe weather, the question how we can best get up-to-date real-time information to individual drivers about the perils of black ice, for example, was one of the things that occurred to me. We should strive to ensure that we get more up-to-date information through the use of satellite navigation and mobile communications. I have the feeling that that could also help people to know about car-sharing opportunities. More thought about that is required. I am not saying that the matter has been worked through yet, but I think that there is some potential there.
The advice that we currently offer, which is given on our behalf by the Energy Saving Trust, includes guidance on setting up car-sharing schemes. Since 2005, the EST has processed 400 travel plan applications, which cover nearly 1 million staff and visitors. Our choose another way website also includes that guidance, together with case studies of organisations that have successfully implemented car-sharing schemes, including liftshare.
For the future, our ambition is that all workplaces with more than 30 employees will have an effective travel plan by 2022 in order to bring about substantial reductions in commuter trips in single-occupant cars. We also aim to provide personalised travel planning advice to all households in Scotland by 2022 to bring about reductions in non-work or school escort trips, which several members have mentioned. I should say that I have never taken only one child to school, but that has been easy, as I have three children to take to school. However, the point is well made. In my community, one can see car after car with one driver and one other individual.
The delivery of advice on an unprecedented scale will be required, so we will wish to consider implementation very carefully. We also want to pay close attention to best practice, wherever it exists—whether in liftshare, getabout, the car-sharing schemes that our regional transport partnerships provide, or in our £15 million joint smarter choices, smarter places project with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. In that project, car-sharing advice is provided across seven demonstration towns, ranging from Kirkwall in the north to Dumfries in the south. That important demonstration project will finish in March this year, and I look forward very much to hearing of the lessons that it will provide for the future.
Meeting closed at 18:14.