Case Study Summaries - Richard Armitage Transport Consultancy ...

MAKING CAR SHARING AND CAR CLUBS WORK CASE STUDY SUMMARIES
Operation of the MEHT group is done by the Travel Plan Co-ordinator and Travelshare-
Essex’s co-ordinator. MEHT’s membership of Travelshare-Essex costs £1,000 per year.
6.10 Provision of minimal personal information was an important factor in designing the
Travelshare-Essex scheme. Names, postcodes and some personal preferences were the
only things saved on the system. Teresa Prosser will show interested staff about how to use
the system in practise, and staff are often surprised about how little personal information is
required, though staff can input their journey pattern into the Travelshare-Essex website.
6.11 Car-share permits are needed for the individual passenger, so a car-share car parked in a
car-share parking bay will display a minimum of two permits. All staff pay for car parking, but
this is currently a nominal fee, and less than what visitors pay.
6.12 Car sharing across functional and departmental boundaries / barriers does occur to a certain
extent. In administrative and medical areas, and where shift patterns allow, people do cross
over these boundaries. Outside these areas (e.g. domestics and porters) people tend not to
share across boundaries. However, this will also be due to shift patterns and to the fact that
these people generally have less interest in looking at the scheme on the internet. They find
out about the scheme by word of mouth, and then, with their car-share partner, they tend to
approach the Travel Plan Co-ordinator and get permits.
6.13 Broomfield has, in general, no reason to open the scheme up to non-employees but it does
allow visiting social workers employed by Essex County Council, which is also a member of
Travelshare-Essex, to apply for a permit if they car-share.
Impact and Effectiveness
6.14 Of the 130 registered members of the Broomfield scheme, 115 members have ‘found’
matches and have been issued with permits. MEHT believes that around 50% of these have
started to car share since the introduction of the scheme. About 85 of these members use
the scheme regularly. The current breakdown of the Broomfield car-sharing membership is
77:23 Female to Male, but a breakdown by age is not available.
6.15 The ‘before’ travel survey found that over 78% of trips to and from work were made by car,
(71% being single-occupancy and 7% car-sharing), whilst cycling accounted for 1.7%,
walking for 3.3% and bus a little over 10%. The remaining 6.23% consisted of staff
members being dropped off by partners or friends, and those coming by motorcycle. The
current mode split of trips is as yet unknown. MEHT have not looked into how much money
people save through car-sharing, but they do know that the majority of their sharers are
groups of three rather than of just two. However, because of shift patterns these groups of
three may only ever travel in groups of two at a time. There is at least one group of four.
Successes / Failures
6.16 MEHT had to appoint a Travel Plan Co-ordinator as part of the Planning Agreement for the
expansion of Broomfield Hospital, but although they were not required to appoint one until
later, they decided to do this early, from summer 2003. The person appointed to the Travel
Plan Co-ordinator post, Teresa Prosser, is a highly visible and proactive advocate of the
Final V1.1, Dec. 2004 - 41 -