Dublin to introduce a car-sharing scheme

serfboard

RTE wrote:

Councillors back car pool scheme

A plan to introduce a car pooling system in Dublin, similar to the bike scheme, has got the backing of city councillors.

New by-laws would allow cars to be left and collected from on-street parking zones in the city under a permit deal with car club companies.

The council has drawn up proposals for by-laws to regulate a system involving up to 1,000 vehicles where car club companies would pay 1.5 hours parking per day per vehicle giving their customers free use of on-street parking.

It is claimed one car pool vehicle can take 15 private cars off the streets.
The by-laws will now be put out for public consultation.

The Department of Transport is considering legislation to give designated parking spaces for the vehicles.

Link. I know this has been attempted before by (an) individual company(ies) but with council backing, could this work?

james142

So basically you rent the car to drive?

serfboard

james142 wrote: »

So basically you rent the car to drive?

That's my understanding of it - it's like DublinBikes - but for cars.

monument

GoCar are already up and running in private spaces around Dublin -- but they and will love to get onto streets at those prices. It's really attractive for the user base also to have more spaces, and ones less hidden away from view.

AlekSmart

monument wrote: »

GoCar are already up and running in private spaces around Dublin -- but they and will love to get onto streets at those prices. It's really attractive for the user base also to have more spaces, and ones less hidden away from view.

It kind-of underlines the All-at-Sea nature of Dublin City's Traffic Policy......if there be any such thing ?

Not that long ago we had annual Operation Freeflows,which we found necessary to implement in order to stave off the total-shutdown of Traffic Flows during the Christmas Period.

Now we have the same Civic Authorities (:o) advertising cut-price Parking,whilst the Public Transport Authorities sanction "significant" fare Increases on their "significantly" reduced Services,as evidenced by the "Seasonal" Nitelink schedule.

As far as I'm concerned,any new initiative which re-establishes (if it even needed to be) the primacy of the car within the Inner Canal Zone is the product of fuzzy-thinking of the highest order.

However,I equally appreciate that this is what typifies our Civic Management anyway,so nothing new or wonderous to be seen here.

serfboard

AlekSmart wrote: »

As far as I'm concerned,any new initiative which re-establishes (if it even needed to be) the primacy of the car within the Inner Canal Zone is the product of fuzzy-thinking of the highest order.

You must love "Dublin City Council's move to cut city centre parking charges for Christmas shoppers" so!

The backers of this car-sharing scheme are saying that it will bring less cars into the city centre. The logic presumably is that people will get public transport in and out, and only grab one of these cars for an absolute short-term necessity.

I remember when I lived in London, for example, and on the way to get the train to work, I passed loads of houses with cars parked outside them. Those cars would sit there all day Monday to Friday, and (mostly) only be used at the weekends. If you could (short-term) rent a car for only when you needed it, wouldn't that be better? No double-paying - once for public transport and once to keep a car on the road (tax, insurance, NCT etc.).

seamus

^^
Yep, I think that's the thinking behind it. If someone only occassionally needs a car (say every Wednesday at 10am to make a 30km trip), but they have a car bought and paid for, then they're more likely to use it for shorter incidental journeys, creating congestion.

But if someone doesn't have a car and instead takes one on a scheme like this, then they'll only use the car for longer necessary journeys and take public transport, walk or cycle shorter journeys.

I think this would actually work better on an inter-county basis. So someone picks up a car from a depot in Naas and drops it off in a depot at the Red Cow, completing the journey by Luas. A car rental scheme to cover travel inside Dublin seems a bit bizarre as these will nearly all be short journeys with far better options than driving.

Mrs OBumble

AlekSmart wrote: »

As far as I'm concerned,any new initiative which re-establishes (if it even needed to be) the primacy of the car within the Inner Canal Zone is the product of fuzzy-thinking of the highest order.

There are quite a lot of people living in apartments in that zone, yes?

Most of the time, they have no difficulty jumping on a bus / train.

But occasionally they buy large things, or need to move lots of stuff from one place to another, or go on a camping holiday (tent, sleeping bag + mat, cooking stuff, backpack, etc). Or even decide to go and visit a place that doesn't have public transport.

Sometimes taxis are good enough (eg Ikea to home), But they can get expensive, and annoying if you need to do a journey with several legs and some time in between.

Giving them easy, short-term, access to a car is A Good Thing (tm), IMHO.


(I live in the inner city, and use www.arguscarhire.ie regularly.)

AlekSmart

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

There are quite a lot of people living in apartments in that zone, yes?

Most of the time, they have no difficulty jumping on a bus / train.

But occasionally they buy large things, or need to move lots of stuff from one place to another, or go on a camping holiday (tent, sleeping bag + mat, cooking stuff, backpack, etc). Or even decide to go and visit a place that doesn't have public transport.

Sometimes taxis are good enough (eg Ikea to home), But they can get expensive, and annoying if you need to do a journey with several legs and some time in between.

Giving them easy, short-term, access to a car is A Good Thing (tm), IMHO.


(I live in the inner city, and use www.arguscarhire.ie regularly.)

Absolutely true,but to get the mix right we really do need to bump-up the frequency,availability and affordability of Public Transport in City Zones...what we are doing,up to now,is bringing Public Transport levels DOWN and cost UP....No sense whatever.

Take a ramble down Parnell St in Dublin City Centre,probably the densest resedential mix in the City with NO public transport through it whatsoever......and then we wonder why the Parnell Centre looks as it does ?

monument

Basically as seamus and Mrs OBumble points to -- car sharing equals less car ownership and less car usage.

AlekSmart wrote: »

Absolutely true,but to get the mix right we really do need to bump-up the frequency,availability and affordability of Public Transport in City Zones...what we are doing,up to now,is bringing Public Transport levels DOWN and cost UP....No sense whatever.

Take a ramble down Parnell St in Dublin City Centre,probably the densest resedential mix in the City with NO public transport through it whatsoever......and then we wonder why the Parnell Centre looks as it does ?

Public transport isn't always a good solution. For the Parnell Street area we're talking mostly about people who live walking distances from where they work and that is reflected in the very high numbers of people who walk. To say walking is the dominant mode is an understatement. There's no good reason to try to get any of those people onto public transport -- it would be a poor use of resources.

For those who need public transport for going further than walking distances -- there's a large range of bus services within a 300-400 meters in one direction for a lot of the street, more in about 500 meters or so in another direction to the quays, the red line Luas is about 300-400 meters away,

Luas BXD will fill any gap.

LivelineDipso

an indirect subsidy to the car dealers etc in Ireland instead of investing in public transport.

monument

LivelineDipso wrote: »

an indirect subsidy to the car dealers etc in Ireland instead of investing in public transport.

How to you stand up that one when car sharing limits car ownership?