Car Clubs
Another way to reduce your spending on petrol is to consider joining a car club. These are local clubs which allow you to book a shared car for the days on which you need it. The cost of partaking is simply the membership and a pay-as-you-go rate for fuel.
The cars are usually left in a central location and can be collected by using a special access card number. It is an environmentally friendly alternative to having a car especially useful if you use public transport during the working week and only require a car - for the weekends. As well as being more environmentally friendly, carclubs are becoming much more popular in light of the credit crunch and the cost of rising fuel. A quarter of a million people now belong to a car club, and the clubs claim people are joining four times faster than they were at the beginning of the year.
See carclubs.org.uk for more information.
Carpooling
Sharing a car journey with others to reduce the cost and effect on the environment, is another means of reducing the amount of petrol you use. A number of British websites aim to bring together drivers for carpooling:
- car-pool.co.uk
- liftshare.org
- zipcar.com
- citycarclub.co.uk
- carshare.com
- streetcar.co.uk
- whizzgo.co.uk
Alternative means of finding a carpool partner is to place an advert in a shop window or on a website such as facebook which has listings of users who are willing to partake in car-sharing. If you are a football fan then make use of wewillfollow.co.uk, a resource site for football fans who want to carpool and lift share.
Tips to ensure it all runs smoothly
- Determine the route and schedule in advance. Where are the pickup and night-time meeting points? Nobody wants to be standing around waiting for one member of the carpool.
- Draw up a timetable so that everyone knows what days they are driving and how the system rotates
- Figure out how you are going to pay for petrol – rotation or dividing up the cost
- Be punctual
- Have some car rules – not everyone likes to talk in the morning, so make sure you know what is and isn’t acceptable
- Talk to each other about all the little details – turn to drive, meeting point and payment etc. It’ll make the whole process much more enjoyable – have a look at commuterpage.com for more tips and information.
