yours2share - sharing stuff & collaborative consumption » sharing solution

More about sharing cabs

sophie — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:02:56 +0000

I posted a couple of weeks ago about how I shared taxis in south west London many years ago, prompted by a post on the Sharing Solution. Shareable.net has a further post about taxis sharing and mentions an iphone application called ridepenguin which is designed to enable this. Great step forward. So far it is only based in Seattle and Las Vegas, but I hope this rolls out quickly. I can see even “I never share anything” City folks using this in London when it’s raining and cabs are like gold dust.

Car sharing and car clubs

sophie — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:50:09 +0000

I’ve blogged before about shared ownership of cars and car clubs, but saw these articles on shareable.net: How to share a car, part 1 and How to share a car part 2. The articles are written by Janelle Orsi the author of a new book The Sharing Solution. The first part broadly covers car clubs, in the UK these are operated by companies like Zipcar, Connect by Hertz and CityCarClub. The second part covers informal car clubs, where a small group (say two to six) private individuals own a car. I’m pleases that , wrote these articles cover this, because I think this is a great way forward, particularly for rural and small town commnities where the major car clubs are unlikely to operate, and where there are often severe transport issues. However few people appear to even cosider owning a car with people who live nearby. Part 2 also covers carpooling or liftsharing: in the UK the major operator is Liftshare.

Another great source of information about car sharing is Carplus and this recent report by Frost and Sullivan on the sustainable potential of carsharing is worth a read.

yours2share has some great guidance on car clubs and car sharing and here are the current car sharing listings

Sharing taxis

sophie — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:55:52 +0000

This post on the sharing solution caught my eye: New App for Cab Sharing Could Help Travelers Share and Save.

I’m reminded of a time many years ago (long before yours2share time) when I used to stagger back on Friday night to south west London after a night out in town. I often caught the last train to Surbiton, which arrived about 1am, the last train to the place I actually lived left ridiculously early in the evening. Then I had to take a cab the last four miles. It cost about £5, but that didn’t bother me much, the main problem was most of south west London also used this train. It was the best way of getting back late at night to that part of the capital. So at 1am, there would often be a queue of a 100 people, and although the taxi drivers knew there were rich pickings to be had, there were never enough.

After spending an hour or so waiting a couple of times, there came a time when, fueled by a particularly large helping of wine, I shouted from the back of a very long queue, “is anyone going to Thames Ditton or beyond?” Suddenly sense prevailed. I joined up with two or three other people and I was in a cab a few minutes later. Behind me, I could hear “anyone going to Esher?” “I’m going to Weybridge..” “Walton anyone?”. From then on, whenever I arrived at this queue, I just asked the question and each time it would start the same chain reaction.

As far as the taxi driver was concerned, they always seemed to do well. Everyone was expecting to pay the fare themselves, so any reduction was good news, so often people would put far more in than the actual proportion of the fare required. Tips were always substantial. What I call a win, win, win!

So the question is, how to get people to think about sharing?