GoCar brings wheels to residents of Beacon South Quarter

Sandyford Industrial Estate – or Beacon South Quarter as the retail and apartment end likes to be known – must be finally boosting its residential population as a new car-sharing scheme has just added it to its locations.

GoCar, Ireland’s innovative car-sharing club has set up a location at Beacon South Quarter, offering apartment dwellers there the use of two cars on their doorstep.

According to Niall Carson, GoCar’s business development manager, there are now 800 apartments in the complex, mostly two-bedroom properties, but they only have one car parking space per unit.

Twenty-nine-year-old software developer Niall Conzer is one of the residents who avails of the service. He says he uses it because it is cheaper than taxis. He lives in nearby South Central Apartments and uses the cars to move property, play football with the lads midweek and visit his parents in Templeogue at the weekend.

There’s a once-off membership fee of €50, and then a monthly charge of €5, and cars can be rented at 15-minute intervals. It’s not unlike the Dublin Bike scheme in that cars can be picked up at any time in specific locations. The cost is from €4.70 per hour and the fleet’s cars and van are used for everything from attending business meetings, doing a supermarket shop, getting away for the weekend or even moving house, Carson explains. Weekends are the busiest time.

The charge is per kilometre driven, and fuel and insurance is included in the cost.

The membership card will open the car, while the key is kept in a secure pin-coded box.

The scheme has been up and running for about two weeks and Carson says the cars at Beacon are in use about 30 per cent of the time.