Last week I met with Car Club gurus from Southwark Council and Streetcar (soon to be renamed Zip Cars to reflect a merger). I wanted to know how quickly we could help them expand in East Dulwich and Southwark to revolutionise car ownership and access to cars.

Fascinating to hear that Zip Cars is a largely north American company with 400,000 members across the states and claims to be the largest car club company in the world.

Every car club car has been shown over time to replace 22 privately owned cars. So short of draconian parking permits car club cars are one of the only ways to relieve car parking pressure. Car Club members tend to give up on ownership of either their primary or secondary cars. They tend to walk, cycle and use public transport more with car club membership.

So far Southwark has 115  car club cars with 23 in the Dulwich area – partly because we funded an extra 10 spaces via our East Dulwich Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding. Transport for London has provided funding to allow another 80 car club spaces over the next two year.

The only thing holding back further rapid growth is getting people to join. So far 7,750 members in Southwark but this is still short of the 15% of adults in Islington who’ve joined. In Southwark we’ll need to reach 35,000 to reach what some have called saturation. So still lots to be done.

If you have any big events coming up and would be happy for the Streetcar promo team to come along please do get in touch with me.