“The Future is Shared” Event in West Yorkshire

“The Future is Shared” Event in West Yorkshire

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The West Yorkshire Combined Authority hosted an ACT Travelwise event on December 6th, 2016 in Leeds, titled “The Future is Shared”. Alistair Kirkbride and Antonia Roberts from Carplus and Bikeplus (UK) presented on the rapidly evolving world of car clubs (aka car-sharing), ride-sharing and bike-sharing. Carplus and Bikeplus lead in maximising the social, environmental and economic benefits of shared transport by accelerating uptake of best practice and nurturing innovation across the UK. The event with 40 members from the West Yorkshire Travel Plan Network focussed on assessing the impact that mainstreaming shared mobility options could have on travel behaviour and how these schemes can contribute to Mobility as a Service.

A broad range of interesting facts and figures about shared mobility in the United Kingdom were presented at the event in Leeds:

According to Car Plus, there are currently over 210,000 people in England and Wales sharing cars in 3600 formal car clubs. Additional citizens are sharing their cars privately, but it is naturally more difficult to assess this figure. The Car Club Coalition has set a target of a million car club users in London by 2025. According to another report, Uber and other ride-hailing services will account for a quarter of all trips globally by 2030. In the UK, there are currently over 500,000 people sharing lifts through car sharing platforms (i.e. Liftshare). Approximately 1000 shared lift schemes in UK are corporate initiatives.

With regard to bike-sharing, there are currently bike-sharing hubs in 17 cities across the UK offering 18,000 bikes to nearly 140,000 regular and occasional users. The benefits of the bike share offers include: normalising cycling, an increase in use of public transport, reducing car use and safety improvement.

As a result of the bike share schemes there has also been a positive impact on gender mainstreaming cycling: of the women using the bike-sharing systems, 13% became new cyclists, 37% increased their cycling and 9% purchased a bike. In 2015, over 10 million bike share trips were made in the UK and many more towns and cities are becoming interested in developing their own schemes. Alistair and Antonia also discussed the concept of Mobility as a Service (MaaS), its potentials, barriers and future.

In the future, the Travel Plan Network team (click here to learn more about the Travel Plan Network) will be working more closely with Carplus with a view to more involvement and further the integration of shared mobility in the travel plan options.

To learn more about ACT Travelwise, follow the link here.

ACT Travelwise_The future is shared event in Leeds

13 Jan 2017