Imagine being able to use a car whenever you need to, without having to bear the burdens of owning one - insurance, depreciation, VRT, road tax, loan repayments and the problem of finding a parking space. That's what the concept of car-sharing offers to thousands of people in 250 European cities and towns.
Essentially, it's a co-operative car rental scheme. Munich's Stadt Auto club, for example, has 1,700 members. Each of them paid £80 to join up, plus a returnable deposit of £400 and a £6 monthly fee. In return, they have access to Stadt Auto's fleet of 64 vehicles, distributed around 32 reserved parking locations in the city.
"With membership of a car-share scheme, you're only a phone call away from a convenient car whenever you want one," says European Car Sharing, a Hamburg-based umbrella group promoting this novel initiative, "and you can save at least £1,000 a year optimally combining public transport and car-sharing."
Every member has a personal key or smart card and a booklet showing the cars available. Getting access to them is "as easy as booking a tennis court", according to ECS. "The city car club deals with car maintenance, insurance and all the other hassles car owners usually have to deal with themselves. Just the driving is left to you."
The use of a car costs from £1.15 to £2.30 an hour, depending on its size, and most bookings are for less than six hours. Members almost always get the car they want, even at relatively short notice, and Stadt Auto plans to make it even easier for them by ensuring that there is always a car available within a 10-minute walk.
Car-sharing is ideal for people living in inner-city areas, where parking is at a premium or simply not available. The possibility of using a car-sharing vehicle for heavy shopping, excursions to the countryside or whatever, reduces the need for everyone to have their own private cars and also encourages them to use public transport.
Though the idea may seem outlandish at first sight, it is based on the proposition that many cars lie idle for as much as 23 hours a day. So why pay all the costs associated with owning a car when you can get one whenever you want? As Aristotle once observed, "wealth resides much more in use than in ownership".
According to Green Futures magazine, this is "a good motto for the car-sharing movement which has broken out of the green ghetto and into the mainstream in several European cities". Enthusiasts maintain car-sharing could help clear kerbsides from the clutter of stationary cars as well as reducing overall traffic levels.
The Swiss, who first pioneered the idea in 1987, now have one nation-wide organisation, Mobility, which has 25,000 members and a fleet of 1,200 cars, all co-operatively owned. It really took off really a few years ago after a deal was done with SBB, the Swiss railways, offering combined rail passes to Mobility's members.
There are thousands of car-sharers in the Netherlands, where links with public transport are also strong. Indeed, the availability of good public transport is seen as vital for the success of car-sharing schemes; figures show that their members use public transport much more often than car owners, especially for commuting.
The Hanseatic city-state of Bremen offers discounted car-sharing to season ticket holders on its public transport system. Bremen's city car club started five years ago with 28 members sharing five cars; now it has 800 members and 48 cars. Reciprocal arrangements mean they can also avail of car-sharing schemes in other cities.
Europe-wide, ECS forecasts 350,000 car-sharers by 2003, on current trends. The idea is even catching on in Britain, with Edinburgh's new council-backed City Car Club launched last March. A "paper-free" operation, it features electronic keys, in-car communications and GIS (geographical information system) tracking.
Mr Richard Armitage, of Smart Moves Ltd, a Coventry-based company promoting car-sharing schemes in Britain, says a small scheme has just started in Leeds, with 12 people sharing one car. "We're beavering away behind the scenes and I would be confident that the picture will look a lot brighter in 12 months."
At present, there is no car-sharing scheme in Ireland. Mr Graham Lightfoot, a Co Clare-based international transport consultant, started a scheme called the Co-Op Car Club in Dublin in 1997. Its 20 members paid a joining-up fee of £50, plus a £250 deposit and a monthly fee of £10. Usage was charged at 15p to 20p a mile.
However, the scheme had to be scrapped after the first year. "Our main problem was that we couldn't get insurance. No Irish-based insurance company would deal with us and we had to arrange it through a broker in England, but that only lasted for 12 months. I think the problem was that they had never seen anything like this."
Though the initiative had sponsorship from the Dublin Transportation Office and the EU, and Iarnrod Eireann allowed the coop to park its three cars at the DART stations in Sandymount and Clontarf Road, "without insurance, we were stymied", Mr Lightfoot says, "but it could be reactivated if this problem was sorted out".
There were also meetings with the Dublin Docklands Development Authority and Temple Bar Properties with a view to setting up car-sharing schemes for apartment-dwellers in these areas, but they produced no definite proposals. "I think we were a bit too far ahead of the game, so nothing came of that," he says.
Altogether, there were about 500 inquiries - though, curiously, these did not translate into membership. "We did a follow-up to find out why and it transpired that most people hadn't understood the scheme. Because it was such a novel idea, they couldn't get their heads around it, but there is still a chance it could catch on here."
Ms Marian Wilson of the DTO believes car-sharing needs a "heavyweight institutional champion", such as Dublin Corporation, which could directly facilitate it. "We would also recommend that they should prune the number of car-parking spaces in new apartment buildings to make room for car-sharing spaces."
Cllr Ciaran Cuffe, the Green Party's transport spokesman, said it should be possible for the corporation to allocate the ground floor area of its Drury Street, Mansion House and Cathal Brugha Street multi-storey car parks to car-sharing clubs catering for some of the estimated 25,000 additional people living in the city centre.
"It needs to be fully computerised and very well managed. Members need to have choice and complete availability so that they can get the car they want when they want it. I would be among those in the market for such a car-sharing scheme; my own car is just sitting out on the street six days a week because I use it so infrequently."
Further information: Graham Lightfoot, telephone 061 921121 or e-mail paydc@bealtaine.ie; Horst Schultz, European Car Sharing, telephone 0049 40 280 54124 or e-mail: h.schultz@knuut.de, and Richard Armitage, Smart Moves Ltd, telephone 0044 161 368 6603, or via the Internet at www.smartmoves.co.uk