Welcome. There is plenty to get your teeth into this month, with the pace not slackening one bit for summer. We are pleased to share hopeful stirrings on the UK Government side. This comes alongside insightful new academic findings, plus news of a looming cost and viability problem for car clubs in London, as well as the latest CoMoUK action in the press and before Parliament.
I hope you’ve been able to get a break of some kind in the holiday season and look forward to hearing from you soon – perhaps at our mobility roadshow at UWE in Bristol in September? More details below.
Keep in touch,
Richard Dilks
Chief Executive, CoMoUK
News & insights 🗞️
CoMoUK at the Transport Select Committee
We are pleased that the Transport Select Committee of the UK Parliament is holding a session on car and lift sharing. This is the first in many years and we hope helps to draw much-deserved positive attention to this remarkable sector, not least from the department whose work the Committee scrutinises, DfT.
Our chief executive Richard Dilks will be giving evidence alongside public and private sector speakers and we will of course be reporting back to you and engaging the Department too.
Government says it wants to legislate e-scooters, last mile delivery vehicles
Going further than it has to date, Government has pointed to its Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan, part of the Industrial Strategy, which commits Government to pursuing legislative reform for micromobility vehicles when parliamentary time allows.
It rightly says this will ‘provide a proportionate and more agile process for regulating Low-speed Zero Emission Vehicles, likely including pavement delivery robots, e-scooters and last mile delivery vehicles’.
We have been pushing for this for many years now and will continue to do so until legislation is passed.
London Congestion Charge response
We took the unusual step of publishing a press release on our response to the proposed changes to London Congestion Charge. That is because we continue to struggle to see positive steps from TfL with regard to car clubs and because the extra cost burden these changes will put on the car club sector in the capital are significant.
We calculate these add up to over £1m per year, something the sector cannot readily afford, and are a particular blow in relation to EVs in the capital’s car club fleet. Read an example piece of coverage of our points.
We therefore argued that car club vehicles be treated differently to private cars by retaining the current 100% discount for car club EVs, keeping the existing price level for car club cars and giving car club EVs resident within the very small area that is the Congestion Charge Zone a full discount (residents’ cars have historically enjoyed a 90% discount).
We were pleased to hear that our points were being made in the responses of various boroughs, are grateful to Clean Cities for their supportive quote on our press release and were heartened that the Labour Group on the London Assembly Transport Committee also pushed for car clubs to be treated differently from private cars.
CoMoUK in the press
In a piece in Local Transport Today on the English Devolution Bill, we said that “We welcome the governmental and parliamentary focus the Bill will bring to shared micromobility, which has been ignored as a sector for far too long, despite its mass-scale reach and multiple benefits."
And in a recent CityAM piece, we recommended that “councils [is] to make any financial asks clear and transparent, and understand that these must be balanced against other considerations such as service quality and viability.”
Last but very much not least, we were delighted to see Private Eye report on our latest car club annual report as well as our work on the costs faced by car club operators when operating EVs rather than petrol or hybrid vehicles. They even referred to remarks made by the then Transport Minister at our 2021 Conference to boot. ‘Hedgehog’ points to the opportunity for Government to foster a more equitable access to EVs than solely through people buying or leasing them. We agree.
People and Place Grant fund – Spotlight on SEStran project
As part of our People and Place funded work, we were delighted to launch our first pop-up mobility hub in the SEStran area on 30 July, supported by the City of Edinburgh Council.
The hub will be on Pennywell Road, Edinburgh until mid-September to help people walk, wheel or cycle more for local journeys.
The hub has been well received by the community and so far we have held two active travel activities, with North Edinburgh Art’s delivering a led ride and Dr Bike session. This project has been made possible thanks to People and Place grants funded by the Scottish Government and administered and supported by SEStran. Please see our pop-up webpage for information on similar projects.
Watch this space for updates on the SPT and Tactran People and Place pop-up hub projects.
Stirling Council Sustainable Mobility Strategy
CoMoUK has recently submitted a response to Stirling Council’s Sustainable Mobility strategy. We were pleased to see the inclusion of active travel routes, the facilitation and promotion of car sharing and car clubs and the development of a hub and spoke model for public transport in the plan.
We believe there are opportunities to include shared transport further including how it can integrate with public transport and be a key part of mobility hubs.
We are looking forward to working with Stirling Council as part of our Tactran pop-up project with a main aim being community engagement around bike share.
The research found that costs for operating car clubs are dominated by staff needed for cleaning and parking vehicles. It is similar for shared e-scooters and bike sharing, where staff are required to maintain and redistribute them.
Carbon savings from car sharing outweigh those from electric vehicles
A fascinating recent study from Bremen has found that the emissions saved by sharing cars and the impacts that has far outweigh the emissions saved by turning the whole Bremen shared car fleet electric.
The Schreier Institute was commissioned by the City of Bremen and found that the reduction effect of users' mobility behaviour is already 24,300 tons of CO2 equivalents per year. They also found that the reduction effect of a 100% electric car-sharing fleet in Bremen would only be a maximum of 2,300 tons of CO2 equivalents per year. Read the original German post here, where you can use your browser to translate it to English.
Shared bikes return to Scottish capital
Edinburgh City Council have appointed Voi as their new e-bike share operator for an initial two year trial. Edinburgh's transport boss, Labour councillor Stephen Jenkinson, said: "We’ll be launching the scheme later this week (August 22nd) before expanding across the city through the autumn."
The city’s previous bike hire service, run under the Just Eat Cycles brand by Serco, used a docked model, where electric bikes were parked in charging bays at stations in the city. The new operating model has not been announced but is expected to deploy bikes within designated geo-fenced parking bays. Read coverage from STV News.
London borough bike share boundaries leave comedian unamused
TV presenter Dara Ó Briain has highlighted the frustrations of many London bike share users by comparing the patchwork of agreements which stop some bikes being ridden across boundaries as reminiscent of Cold War Berlin.
In the BBC article and other coverage we state “this rather bizarre set of circumstances is an unfortunate outcome of the current situation in London, where regulation of bike sharing schemes is decided at borough level.
The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill going through Parliament could make Transport for London (TfL) the capital's licensing authority for rental e-bikes, enabling a "more coherent pan-London approach" to be designed. We will continue to work intensively with stakeholders on the Bill.
Guest blog post
Mobilityways have produced a new guide to help the UK as it faces growing challenges around urban congestion, air quality and net zero goals. Read more about The Carpool Behaviour Change Guide in their guest blog post.
Events 🗓️
Mobility Hub Roadshow 2025
Thursday 18 September, 12:00-4:30pm
Join us for our Mobility Hub Roadshow 2025 in conjunction with West of England Mayoral Combined Authority. We will be hearing from a range of speakers including from the Authority, the University of West of England, our sponsor Trueform and Tom Morgan of Supersmith with whom we are partnered with on an innovative project with their 3Scooter.
We will then go on a walking tour of the University hub guided by Meristem Design and there will be optional tours of two further hubs by e-bike, e-scooter or DDRT bus service.
A connected, shared mobility world in practice and in thought. We hope to see you there.
"It’s been amazing. I hadn’t used a bike for over 20 years. The availability of shared bikes gave me the opportunity to go places without having to use my car, get exercise and this led to a positive impact on my health and fitness."
Male user from Worcester, 35-44, Annual Shared Micromobility Report 2024
