Abstract
The way in which people choose to travel has changed throughout history and adaptations have taken place in order to provide the most convenient, efficient and cost-effective method(s) of transport possible. This research explores two trends—technological and socio-economic change—by discussing the effects of their application in the renewed drive to promote car clubs in Greater London through the introduction of new technologies and innovative ways in which a car can be used and hired, thus helping to generate new insights for car sharing. A mixed methods approach was used, combining secondary data analysis obtained from a car club member survey of 5898 people with in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Our findings show that there is an opportunity to utilise car clubs as a tool for facilitating a step change away from private vehicle ownership in the city. In addition, the results suggest that car club operators are seeking to deliver a mode of transport that is able to compete with private car ownership. In terms of policy implications, such findings would suggest that compromise is necessary, and an operator/authority partnership would offer the most effective way of delivering car clubs in a manner that benefits all Londoners.
Highlights
Received: 9 December 2021Car clubs are a method of transport provision that have served Londoners for several years, with data on this particular mode and its use in the city first recorded in 2007 [1]
The quantitative data was categorised into respective boroughs, and it was pos-222 sible to collate the member responses from each operator to provide a wider overview of car club survey respondents who used the services in London, enabling a better understanding the distribution of who car club respondents acrossthus the enabling city
Creating a of car club of survey respondents usedsurvey the services in London, a better dataset at this borough level in turn made the analysis of comparative datasets such as understanding of the distribution of car club survey respondents across the city
Summary
Received: 9 December 2021Car clubs are a method of transport provision that have served Londoners for several years, with data on this particular mode and its use in the city first recorded in 2007 [1]. While car clubs have long been established, it is their evolution in recent years, both in the context of London and more globally that has generated interest Their growth in popularity, both in terms of membership and ridership, has been enabled by technological advances and the rise of the sharing economy, which have made accessing and travelling by car clubs easier and more practical over time [4,5]. The impact of these enabling factors has been recognised in academia, and by governmental organisations such as the Department for Transport, as the following excerpt from its Future of Mobility Urban Strategy shows: Accepted: 10 February 2022.
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