Car-sharing trial kicks off in Auckland
By Esther Goh,
Auckland Transport and Cityhop are trialling a new car-sharing scheme using three on-street parking spaces on Hobson St, College Hill, and Williamson Ave.
The 18-month trial has been launched with a
view of expanding to 10 parking
spaces,
signposted as designated for car share vehicles.
Cityhop offers cars by the hour to members at multiple locations across Auckland and Wellington via a swipe card 24 hours a day.
“Owning a car encourages you to drive. Car share is the ‘emergency wheels’ for those who use public transport and sometimes need a car when they are at work. It’s a lot more affordable and more flexible than a taxi,” says Cityhop co-founder Victoria Carter.
"People who car share find they drive less and businesses find they don’t need fleet cars.”
Auckland Transport is hoping to increase the uptake of car sharing in Auckland as a means of helping to reduce one-person vehicles adding to the city’s congestion levels.
Auckland
Transport parking and operations manager Eunan Cleary says car sharing
is a legitimate part of the transport mix, in a city which has an
overabundance of vehicles.
As part of the
trial, Cityhop will provide Auckland Transport with regular
reports on membership uptake and usage rates for each car.
Cityhop has more than 450 individual members, over 10,000 registered drivers and over 70 corporate companies including government departments and universities.
Car sharing is well established overseas.
Sydney trialled 10 dedicated on-street parking spaces in 2007 and now supports more than 4000 car share members through the provision of nearly 200 parking spaces.
Comments
Morgan Walker
I think car sharing is great for reducing the dependency of cars used by individuals. If the fleet of cars used by the program are all electric vehicles and are super efficient, that would further lend to energy saving and environmental saving effects. If more people can get into this car sharing program, perhaps the government would be more likely to open up more parking spaces solely for those cars.
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