An honest look at one community’s car and bike shares

Hazel Darwin Clements, the project co-ordinator at Porty Community Energy, shares an honest look at what communities can do to share cars and bikes. She has helped start a peer-to-peer car share club and run an eCargo cycle library trial this year with the mission to help people reduce their car use and make local travel more pleasant. We hear from representatives of CoMoUk and HiyaCar as well as professor Jillian Anable, Chair in Transport and Energy at the University of Leeds, and members of the community who have been involved with the projects.  
Hazel's work was supported by one of SCCAN storytelling mini-grants. They are closed to new applicants but will hopefully reopen in April 2023. Get in touch with our Story Weavers on stories@sccan.scot.
Credits
Production: Hazel Darwin-Clements
Music: Coma-Media from Pixabay
 
Resources:
Porty Community Energy: https://portycommunityenergy.wordpress.com/
Porty Community Bikes: https://portycommunitybike.myturn.com/library/
Contact: portycommunityenergy@gmail.com
CoMoUK https://www.como.org.uk/
Hiyacar https://www.hiyacar.co.uk/
1000 Better Stories episode with CoMoUK on community bike shares: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-6we6s-104934e
1000 Better Stories episode with Hazel's story on setting up a community fridge: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-van9y-11f9eea

Transcript:
Kaska: Hi, I’m Kaska, one of SCCAN’s Story Weavers. In today’s episode we have a story from one of our mini-grant recipients, Hazel Darwin Clements. She takes an honest look at the community car and bike shares she’s been setting up in Portobello in Edinburgh. If you’re interested in community-run bike shares you might also enjoy our previous episode we produced with CoMoUK, released in May 2021. Our storytelling mini-grants are closed to new applicants at the moment but we’re hoping to reopen them again in April. Get in touch on stories@sccan.scot if you are interested in applying for one. Now – over to Hazel!
 
Hazel: Hi, I’m Hazel and welcome to this podcast about what communities can do to share vehicles. I’m going to give the first word today to Professor Julian Annabel speaking at the CoMoUK shared transport conference in December ‘22. I went along, virtually, to look for inspiration on what we can do in our community, in Portobello and this talk really struck me. 
 
Julian: Let's focus on the fact that the UN just last month. Brought some really frightening, but I think to be frank, refreshing honesty, that really ought to be the first line that each of us are using every time we introduce our particular initiatives. They said there's no credible pathways to keeping us within safe carbon limits, and by this, what they mean is that there's no country that has come up with the right combination of measures to do this, to keep us on these pathways.
 
They have said there is just about time for us to do so. But the fact is that none of these packages of policies exist out there and there are no exceptions. The eu, the UK in particular, and for transport, it's very complicated obviously, but there's no pathways left for decarbonizing the transport sector without deep cuts in car use by 2030.
 
In half a dozen years time, and those deep cuts in car use are of at least 20% reduction in the amount that cars are used from today's levels. And this is alongside really ambitious uptake of EVs. More ambitious than, than some of us are going for it at the moment. And the the cuts are unnecessary, in part to compensate for the fact that heavy goods vehicles need a bit.
 
To do their thing.
 
Hazel: Professor Annabel’s work at the University of Leeds at the Institute for Transport Studies focusses on understanding travel behaviour and travel patterns and how we can use that knowledge to reduce carbon emissions. And here is something I did not know.
 
Julian: We’re talking then about a scale of change that has not happened anywhere in the world other than maybe into in some small pockets of best practice cities.
 
And we aspire to places like the Netherlands where they've got 29% of trips on the bike. The Dutch. Are as carbon intensive in their travel as we are. They're per average, per capita. Carbon emissions from traveling in the Netherlands is the same as in the UK because they love their cars, they have big cars, and frankly, car use is not restricted in the Netherlands.
 
So we don't even know how to do what we've got to do. So my main message for you today is for you to all, to be more honest. I'm not accusing you of lying, but I am accusing you of focusing on your individual interventions and growing the patronage, and growing the use of your individual interventions and really ignoring the fact that what we need to do is get people outta their cars onto these interventions and that we cannot do that unless we couple these interventions with significant car restraint.
 
 
 
Hazel: Amazing. So, how are we going to do that? What will really get people out of their cars?
 
I don’t have the answer yet. But you know that. You also see the steady stream of single occupancy cars flowing by right? I can’t hear what my daughter is telling me from her buggy because of the roar of them and you’re all still breathing in the fumes that are steadily destroying any credible pathway to keeping us within safe carbon limits. But you are here listening, I am here talking and you never know maybe we can figure it out.
 
In 2022 I was given the opportunity to work for Porty Community Energy a few hours every week. If felt like an exciting year. We set up a bike library project trial and a peer-to-peer car club. We made a start. But it does feel a bit like being the first person to get up on the dance floor. Are you all gonna get up and join in?
 
Let me tell you about it. We’ll start with the cars, but do stay for the bikes (they are the more fun bit!)
 
Here is Hannah Box from CoMoUK speaking at a community workshop we held last summer.
 
Hannah: So we have car club research and bike share research, which is great for producing statistics that we can use to kind of convince people that we need to do a bit more sharing in our. Hannah gave a presentation about some of the latest research into transport and in Scotland the, our transport emissions are about 35, 30 6% of the total emissions of that cars make up about 40%.
 
So quite a large portion is just us moving about in, in vehicles. So what can we do? Well, we can share. So this is from our research from 2021. So we've published this just last month. This revealed that car clubs in Scotland have the potential to reduce about 17 private cars. So one car club car can replace those 17 cars.
 
Hazel: That one really struck me when I heard that 17 cars could be removed for every car club car I would walk down the street counting the cars and imagining them disappearing. 2, 3, 4, 5. I live on a street where cars park on both sides. It so happens there are 17 cars on either side, so that's the whole of one side of the street clear replaced by just one car, club car. Hannah then told us all about the different types of car sharing models.
 
Hannah: There's not kind of like a one solution fits all. So, you know, we may find through discussions today that there is more than one option that could work here. Two options might work really well together.
 
You've got independent car clubs, franchise working with a franchise, you've got peer-to-peer car sharing, and then you've got, uh, Lyft sharing or ride sharing. So which one of these options would work best in our c. Well, first we needed to start the conversation about how we travel and how it might work better.
 
Hazel: So which one of these options would work best in our community? Well first we needed to start the conversation about how we travel, and how might work better.
 
Workshop: So we're just gonna move around the different stations. There's train, cycle, car, bus, walk, or wheel other. So walk around, just watch. There's a cable here that's a little bit hidden. Health and safety. So if everyone wants to stand up, going to do a big shop. What? How do you travel?
 
No judgment, just for fun. No judgment. Nobody's looking at what you're doing. They're only thinking about themselves. (people moving around)
 
Hazel: At the end of the workshop people seemed most keen on the idea of a peer to peer car club. Some people were willing to share vehicles they already own with a group of trusted people. We got in touch with Keith at Hiya Car which seemed like our best option, here he is explaining some background about what they offer communities at a Zoom Q&A.
 
Keith: Just to give you a bit of background about how we've come to the closed loop car sharing setup is that we were approached about 18 months ago by a lady called Emily Kerr, who was very keen to share cars in Oxford, and she gave us a lot of. Very good feedback about people were very keen to share their cars, but they wanted to do it to people that they've trusted and their neighbors as opposed to people that they didn't know.
 
So we spent quite a lot of time working with Emily in Oxford. Um, and we've come up with this closed loop set up whereby we can set up a, a group who can list their cars within that. And they will only be available to a trusted group of people that are allowed to join that network. But we've managed to do that on the back of the wider peer-to-peer platform that we've been working on since 2015.
 
We've come up with a bespoke car sharing insurance. System. Just a bit of background on that. The insurance company that we've been working with on this for the last four years are now the biggest investor in the company as well. We've also worked on the app, you know, it, it is tried and tested now, and it is working.
 
We now have nine closed loops within Oxford itself and across the uk. We've set up 25 closed loops, and that's include including the, the Portobello one as.
 
So we are using Hiya Car but we also have a WhatsApp group and I will now give you a flavour of this:
 
Ping
We’ve made up our minds, and decided we’d love to be part of this group but we’re not going to be contributing our car. This is because we’ve decided to sell Smifu, our Zoe. It’s great, but we need the cash, not the car.   Know anyone looking to buy?
Ping
What's the reg number (So I can look up price estimates.)
I think 'Zoe' is a nicer name than 'Smifu'
Ping
It's in his original message
Ping
Well, only if you actually read the whole thing
Ping
I hate to contradict, but it's there whether you read it or not. Or perhaps we're getting all "if a tree falls down in a forest, with nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound?" LOL
Ping
Ah, I thought this was the car share group, not philosophyLOL
Ping
Welcome Ray! Ray mostly cycles but it would be useful to have a car for some trips like buying plants and escaping to the countryside.
Ping
(Chimzy) Thanks Hazel and thanks to all the people who own cars and are willing to have people like me borrow them!
Ping
(Sian) Welcome Ray! Great to have you in the group.
Ping
We’re off to Mull in April. Would anyone have a car available then? Not too small, ideally.
Ping
Yes. We're on holiday then.
Ping
We've just had our first booking, it's for two hours this evening. Jo’s being charged £22.16. We earn £4.20. Apparently Enterprise is cheaper. Seems a strange pricing system if it produces this.
Ping
Enterprise vehicles the size we have in Porty are ~6.50 per hour
Ping
Ours is a bigger car, which she needs for what she's picking up.
Still seems odd
Ping
Yes it’s very weird. We hired one with this group for three days and we paid £160 (which was a way better price than we’d have paid through hiring a car) but the owner received only £67.
ping
I think we can do way better than this. Bless Hiya car for getting us started, but could we not find out what insurance costs for a day, and then organise via this WhatsApp list?
Ping
Sorry just catching up here. Enterprise charges a yearly fee for the car club also a cost per mile (this is from past experience) I found it to end up quite expensive also the van I hired was so dirty on the inside that we spent at least 30 minutes cleaning it (was moving soft furnishings)
 
So, if we’re honest here it’s not all plain sailing, but there’s a group of people committed to working it out and smoothing the glitches. I was invited to the home of car club members Duncan Wallace and Polly Bennett have a chat about their experiences so far as car owners offering out their car.
 
And how's it, how has it been working so far? Well, we've connected as humans and started to share our assets and worked out our systems and processes and relationships and the problems around it have now been overcome.
 
In the old days, there used to be a lot of problems about sharing insurance ideas and ownership ideas, and the insurance and ownership companies absolutely were blocking anybody to car sharing naturally, whereas humans were perfectly up for it. They just didn't know how to do it. So any challenges, people are obsessed about having their own stuff and the car historically used to represent a status symbol for some reason, and a sense of private good. You know, there aren't really publicly available publicly owned cars. We think it's a private good and individuals have to keep them, obviously according to health and safety, but individuals also have to keep them as theirs and Colour, the colour that they want them and whereas actually it's a shed on four wheels that moves you about, we're a bit obsessed about the privacy of cars. That I think is one of the challenges. I was thinking that it's, um, you know, we see it as a tool. We see our car as a tool and then it's part of this very important move to tool libraries and to, you know, other ways of sharing things.
 
Most of the time that car just sits, just sitting out there. Most of the time we're not using it. You know, we use it occasionally. Yeah. It's like tools in the tool shed. Yeah. And our car is, you know, people don't have to worry. They don't, they can take their dogs in. They can take their kids, they can get sound all over it.
 
They can, you know, we, for us it's a fairly relaxed object. Um, there's no point in cleaning it too much cuz. Just get filthy again in three seconds. You know, ultimately I would be someone who didn't really want private ownership about a vehicle, but would want more of a shared resource that was accessible by all.
 
Because we have dogs, you can't, you are literally not allowed to rent a car. So, you know, there, there are some barriers in the way for us to just do that kind of thing, and that's why we currently have a car. It became difficult for us to function in life. Um, , that's not very good . It's not very good that you have to go and get a car in order to take your dogs to wherever.
 
What you really want is an equipment depot that you have a relationship with the equipment, you know how the equipment works, but also someone can show you how it works and you can choose which equipment you need for what trip, and then you can keep turning adventures. Capitalism doesn't like that kind of cooperation, but actually it's right here in the street.
 
You know how many cars are out there un used. Right now, you know plenty. I know the key holders cuz I know people on my street. That's just a conversation. That's the point is that they could come and borrow us, we could borrow our layers. We trust systems, you know, therefore you've created a system.
 
That's what we need. Yeah. Um, we need an assumption that there's a system and the fact that somebody in, in your role means the system's being regulated and that's what we need.
 
 
Hazel: For a while we hung on to our car because we wanted to sometimes take our canoe for a trip somewhere. You can’t put a canoe on a hire vehicle. In the end we decided we couldn’t justify keeping up a car for that, so we sold it. Then last summer, after setting up the peer-to-peer car club we were able to borrow a vehicle from someone locally for a little cash, and they didn’t mind us putting the canoe on it. But we haven’t needed a car since. But we could use one and that possibility is of value to us. Some people in the group felt like it wasn’t working because the cars weren’t being borrowed enough. But knowing it’s there if you need it seems to be one of the main things people like about their cars! So it may just give some people the confidence to get rid of that car that just sits there, outside the house - which means we start to see our streets and public space differently? Instead of living in a giant car park, we could live in something that more resembles an actual park. And there’s a hassle factor to booking a car so you are more likely to use it only when totally necessary. Therefore there will be less journeys made by car. And now let me tell you about some of the more pleasurable ways to get around.
 
(Music)
 
So another thing we’ve been thinking about sharing in Porty is eCargoCycles. Bikes and trikes with boxes on the front for transporting kids, dogs, and stuff. Have you seen someone casually cycling a freezer along the high street? That was me.
Last year we ran a 6 month trial of a Porty bike library. We borrowed a bike and a trike from Cargo Bike Movement to loan out. Here’s one of our library members, Karen.
 
(Karen bit)
 
We had 365 bums on the bikes during the 6 months, that’s 152 loans but we also did lots of trial opportunities at festivals and the market and so on to give folk a go. People were keen! 100% of borrowers thought it should carry on and here’s an interesting bit: We asked ‘Do you think that regular access to a cargo bike would make you consider giving up your car and 46% said yes, while 32% said maybe. Only 21% said no. That’s encouraging right?
 
That’s what keeps me going down this road – even though if I’m honest, and I said I would be, I’m nervous. And here’s why. We’re encouraging cyclists, including new cyclists, riders with children on the bike, to cycle in a city which has not yet sorted out it’s attitude towards cyclists. We need safe infrastructure NOW. If the policy is there, implement it, if the laws are there, enforce them, if the ambition is there, reach it and if none of these things are good enough then make them better. Otherwise people are going to get hurt. This is not going to work unless the whole wider reaching shift takes place and it needs to happen all at once.
 
Let’s acknowledge the challenge but then work to overcome it. I was given a lovely mug for Christmas by my friend jen that says “Would those who say it can’t be done please stand clear of those doing it.” Here’s Jen writing about using the shared eCargo bike as a volunteer for the community fridge:
 
 
 
So let’s be hopeful in 2023 let’s see what happens. The plans are there to set up something more permanent and wider reaching in the community. Use a little funding and stretch it out as far as possible, like communities do. We need volunteers, we need willing from the community, we need passionate people to drive it forward. And so far we’ve been blown away. Local businesses have offered to sponsor us, different travel organisations are getting behind us, the Porty Travel Hub is planning to launch in spring and be the home for shared vehicles in this community. Thank you SCCAN for the opportunity, and thanks to you for listening and letting me share. I would love to hear your experience of sharing vehicles and start a conversation so please do get in touch with me about this through the SCCAN Vive platform or through Porty Community Energy social media.