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I don't know the numbers but presumably each Zipcar (or similar) replaces more than 1 owned car.
Yes, Zipcar definitely results in a net lowering of cars. There did publish some research (obviously in their favour so no idea how factual it was) on this the other year.
Zipcars are mostly used for random shortish journeys where other things are far less practical.
Commuting in a Zipcar would be prohibitively expensive as the vast majority of them can't be used for point to point trips, so you'd need to be hiring it for a full day (8h is roughly the same price as 24h in Zipcar's pricing) with it sitting unused at your work for 7.5h or that.
Also family car use changes over time. We quite happily got by with no car for the first 6 years of MiniGB, using rentals or Zipcars for holidays or random journeys. But with changes in what we do, and specifically what MiniGB has become interested in, we have chosen to facilitate this using a car.
Often the reason to default to a car is time. It's often, by far and above, the quickest way to do a particular journey (as long as you don't go into central London).
Sure I can take my daughter to her half term cricket camp 4 miles away (as the crow flies) on public transport, but it would be nearly a 2 hour round trip by train/bus/etc, impractical if I'm working. Yet it is only a 25 minute round trip by car. She's not up for cycling there and back otherwise we'd do that.
20 miles in the car is ~£8 (at 40p a mile once you consider petrol, insurance, wear and tear, etc). No chance of doing the 4 journeys required for £2 each in an Uber. If we timed it right I might be able to do it for £4 each way in a Zipcar assuming I can guarantee to get it done in 30 minutes, otherwise it's an hour booking and that's £16 a day minimum.
Of course, we could try and find something a bit more local but we've chosen not to do that. We've chosen to keep her at the club where there's some family history, where she knows and enjoys playing, and where the standard of coaching is excellent.
Give it another year or so and she'll be happy going there and coming back on public transport on her own, and so we don't need to rely on a car for that. But my point is that there's a small window of a couple of years where using a car is, annoyingly, the easiest option for us in this specific situation.
Also good as the garage has said our car won't pass its MOT next year so we'll be getting rid of it, with no plans to replace it. We're already grandfathered in to Zipcar with no annual fees (we were early members of Streetcar which they acquired) so that and rental cars will do what we need.
Reducing the dependencies on cars needs this country to do a whole bunch of things it's been protecting car drivers from for years:-
- Reinstate the fuel duty escalator so that motorists aren't subsidised as much
- Increase VED rates
- Increase on-road parking costs for new permits
- Decrease numbers of on-road parking spaces
- Improve public transport so that it is a viable alternative and reliable
etc
None of which are general vote winners so none of them will ever really happen.
- Reinstate the fuel duty escalator so that motorists aren't subsidised as much
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Greenbank
Stonehedge
Do car share schemes help with this? I don't know the numbers but presumably each Zipcar (or similar) replaces more than 1 owned car. That gets cancelled out if they up the numbers for ease of use though.
Also leasing instead of owning - I know in some sectors this is seen as a critical move towards a functioning circular economy, but only if the leasing company genuinely retains the resource value of the things they take back. Needs both cultural and legislative change to work.