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LET’S CALL IT the curse of car ownership – that those who have them shall feel obliged to use them, whether or not they need to.
But what if cars became an on-demand commodity, in the same way music and video downloads punched a hole through the CD and DVD trade?
That is the goal of GoCar, Ireland’s first car-sharing network, which operates a fleet of 100 cars in Cork and Dublin, with the bulk of its vehicles in the capital.
“Globally, car sharing is a real growth industry as part of the sharing economy and the idea of access over ownership,” the company’s head of sales and operations, Niall Carson, told TheJournal.ie.
We would see ourselves in the same bracket as what has happened in the music industry … something can be there at your fingertips, but you only pay when you use it.”
However while many international cities have long-established car-sharing networks with European capitals like Berlin home to several different outfits, in Ireland the industry has been much slower to get off the ground.
A long haul
GoCar was launched as a pilot scheme at Cork in 2008 and was later brought to Dublin by entrepreneurs Marc Rafferty and Mike Newham.
In 2012 it was taken over by Irish Car Rentals, which has the Europcar franchise for the country, and its industry-veteran chief, Colm Menton.
At that stage, GoCar had plans to expand its fleet to 200 cars by the end of 2013, however it was only earlier this month the company crossed the 100-vehicle milestone.
“We’re growing now to a sustainable level, but it has been a long haul over the last number of years,” Carson said.
A lot of (the delay) came down to access to car-parking spaces and access to places on the street.”
The watershed moment came in August 2013 when Dublin City Council granted GoCar its first “car club” license, which allows its cars to take up on-street spaces without paying for parking.
The move came as part of a strategy to cut car use in the city with research showing the amounts people drove went down and their use of other transport options went up when car-sharing networks were introduced.
“I think cars are overused in the city – sometimes because people own a car and they’re making their repayments on it, they’re paying the insurance on it, they see public transport as an extra cost,” Carson said.
But car sharing encourages people to move to other forms of transport because they don’t feel like it’s an opportunity lost.”
Since the change GoCar’s fleet has nearly doubled and its membership expanded from about 700 users to over 4,000, or 40 people to each vehicle it operates.
The next step
Carson said the next major change would came when councils adopted new laws then-transport minister Leo Varadkar signed a year ago to enable on-street spaces to be reserved exclusively for car-sharing vehicles.
“When we get that in place and dedicated spaces come about, which is really, really close to happening, that will make a huge, huge difference,” he said.
At the moment we’ve got permit-based systems where cars are parked on the street but it’s difficult to grow because we can only put cars on the streets that have parking available.”
Dublin City Council has separately set a target that only 20% of travellers in and out of the city centre will use private cars by 2017 as part of a strategy that will ban vehicles altogether from several streets.
Carson said with the financial backing and operations GoCar now had in place it was “not unrealistic at all” for it to aim to double the size of its fleet to 200 cars within 12 months.
How does GoCar work?
This month, as part of TheJournal.ie’s ongoing startup and small and medium enterprise (SME) focus, we are looking at peer-to-peer services and the sharing economy.
To view other stories from our collection, click here.
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how about a decent interconnected and affordable public transit system that’s run for the travelling public and not for the people who work for it instead of promoting car use?
I’ve been using go car recently. Frankly, I find it expensive but very useful.
used them for a year. …awful customer service ands accounts department. …won’t use them again
The answer is simple – more accommodation in the city centre.
Dublin City planners need to stop the idiocy of low-rise buildings.
For every extra person living in the city, that’s one less commuter in the morning & evening.
Exactly, this is a point I feel as a public we need to begin to demand of our City Planners, we have some great sites in the DSDZ (Docklands Strategic Development Zone) that I fear will be completely wasted and condemned to the comply to ridiculous height restrictions.
If we really want our city to see its full potential, we need to look at building up and maximising what we can get from these new developments. London have built 7 Skyscrapers since the Olympics alone, and the standard of architecture is phenomenal and a huge asset to the City, so nobody can look up the quays and tell me that the ridiculous string of buildings limited to the same height has a positive impact on Dublin City.
Is there an Insurance issue
.
I’ve seen this work in Milan. No monthly charge. Pay by the minute for use. That’s the way to go.
make the bus lanes continuous, lower bus fares and put on more routes – IMP buses if needs be, wait a few months and watch what happens!! seriously what’s another few months of loss at DB before profits!! Once the people are convinced it works they will take the bus..happy days…
International ride to work day tomorrow. If 10% of vehicles were motorbikes, you commute time would be cut by 40%. http://www.ridetowork.eu
Check out carma app it rocks
Great idea for carpooling
Used all over the world
And came from ireland :)
I’ve looked at this in the past as I only really need a car once a week or so, it works out to be really expensive, especially if you take the car on a trip out if Dublin. It’s much cheaper to get a car from enterprise.
50 euro registration and 60 euro a year without even opening a car door.
Just get a annual zero excess car rental policy for 40 quid , then about 15 euro a day from enterprise
Overpriced. I sold my car in March and hire on when needed. Currently pay just under a tenner a day with no depreciation, tax or insurance to worry about. Sadly the best it gets is an entry level Hyundai or a Capture.
what s wrong with hyuandi? …..I have one and it’s brilliant
People who carpool each morning should be allowed to use the bus lanes.
have your say