I met recently Ali Clabborn, founder of liftshare.com, the social enterprise he set up ten years ago whose aim is to make more efficient use of the 38 million empty car seats on UK roads every day by encouraging and enabling more people to share their car journeys.   Liftshare, now probably the largest car sharing scheme in the word, helps individuals to travel more sustainably by means of an online network which matches people with similar journeys so they can travel better together - saving money and cutting their carbon footprint.

Car sharing is seen as one of the ‘softer measures’ or ‘smarter choices’ that can reduce car use.  But perhaps because it still involves the car, sharing has tended to attract less official endorsement than other approaches. National Travel Survey data show that car occupancy has remained fairly steady over the past decade, at about 1.6 on average.  60% of all car trips are single occupancy, 85% for commuting and business.  So there is plenty of scope for car sharing, particularly by people travelling to the same workplace.

I have been a bit doubtful about the scope for smarter choices to reduce transport carbon emissions.  For all their virtues, the disadvantage of walking, cycling and public transport is that door-to-door speeds tend to be slower than for car travel, which would tend to reduce access and choice – not likely to be popular. But this is not the case for car sharing.  Accordingly, I am persuaded that car sharing warrants more support as an approach that can contribute usefully to carbon reductions while maintaining personal mobility.