Do you drive to work on your own? If so you might like to consider car sharing. I see a lot of people driving to and back from work on their own, yet they still complain about the traffic volume and congestion. If reducing C02 emissions isn’t a strong enough reason to try car sharing then maybe reducing the time it takes you to get to and back from work will convince you. Or maybe the money savings?
By taking just two extra passengers with you, you can effectively divide your petrol costs by three. Let’s say you spend thirty pounds a week driving to and from work. That’s £20 a week you’ve saved just by giving two people a lift. If you all meet in the same approximate central place every day you can alternate assigned driver, meaning two of the three car sharers will get a little exercise two out of three of the days, by walking to the meeting point.
Anyway if that’s not enough to convince you, let’s add up the savings based on the numbers above:
£20 multiplied by 50 weeks = £1000 over the course of a year. That’s just based on petrol — not taking into consideration possible benefits to your cars condition. For a more detailed calculation, which includes C02 savings checkout the 2carshare website.
To summarise the amazing benefits of car sharing
Immediate benefits for individuals:
- Go on one extra holiday per year or buy 1 million penny sweets or go on ten hot air balloon rides (I’ll leave it up to you what you do with the money you save on petrol).
- Get a little extra exercise (if you walk to a centralized meeting spot).
- The satisfaction of knowing you’re doing something to help the environment.
- Less boring car journeys if you share lifts with someone who likes reading story books out loud?
Possible benefits if everyone started car sharing
- Less/no time spent queuing in traffic.
- Shorter journey times, therefore
- More time in bed/more time eating breakfast/whatever else you might like to do with a spare ten minutes in the morning.
- Cleaner air on our streets — something I’d personally appreciate living in Bath.
If you’re interested in trying out car sharing there are a few websites that have been set up to help people organise themselves in our local area:
2carshare.com — Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol and Gloucestershire;
carsharewiltshire.com — Wiltshire
Or try searching Google for your specific area.
Or if you’d like to try using this website to organise a car share enter you jourey details and times in the comments area below.
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