Shared Transport: Government Policy Objectives — House of Commons, 2022-03-09
Topic: Transportation
Benjamin Peter James Bradshaw (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with that. Car clubs represent a fantastic resource for both national Government and local government to achieve exactly those aims There are currently around 6,000 car club vehicles in the United Kingdom. The number of active car club members—that is people who have joined, renewed their membership or used a car club in the last 12 months— is approaching half a million, which is a massive 96% increase in just one year. Total membership is 784,122, which is a 24% increase on the previous year. The transport sharing umbrella organisation, CoMoUK, has found that for every car club vehicle, 18.5 private cars are taken off the roads, taking into account the reduction in the number of cars owned by members and purchases that do not take place Nationally, because car club vehicles are on average just over 1.5 years old, their carbon emissions are an average of 26% lower than the average car in the United Kingdom. In Exeter we are lucky to have more than 50 Co Cars, including 20 electric vehicles, and more than 150 electric bikes—they are somewhere on a street near you. Some 11% of car club cars nationally are electric, compared with less than 1% of privately owned cars across the United Kingdom. That makes driving an electric car not just possible for those who cannot afford it, but easily accessible. Access and social equity are crucial, and 20% of car club members stated that although they could not afford to buy a private car, joining a car club gave them access to one when they needed one Car sharing also accelerates modal shift. Since joining a car club, 16% of people said that they had walked more, 10% said that they had cycled more and 26% said that they had cut their car use overall. I stress that shared transport covers a range of other modes including bikes, e-scooters—in trial areas only, of course—demand-responsive transport such as flexible buses and lift share. It also includes so-called mobility hubs: places that enable people to switch easily between public, active and shared transport modes. Bicycle sharing has been shown to be a powerful tool to re-engage lapsed cyclists, with 50% of bike share members in the UK saying that it was the trigger to get them back on a bike again and 53% saying they would have made their last trip by car or taxi if bike share had not been available The COP26 declaration on accelerating the transition to 100% zero-emission cars and vans, signed by the UK Government, states: "We recognise that alongside the shift to zero emission vehicles, a sustainable future for road transport will require wider system transformation, including support for active travel, public and shared transport, as well as addressing the full value chain impacts from vehicle production, use and disposal." The Secretary of State for Transport, in the foreword to the transport decarbonisation plan in 2021, said: "We cannot simply rely on the electrification of road transport, nor believe that zero emission cars and lorries will solve all our problems." The Minister—I am pleased to see her in her place—told the conference of CoMoUK in December last year that shared mobility must become the norm across the UK and that the country needed to do more to move away from "20th century thinking centred around private vehicle ownership" and introduce "greater flexibility, with personal choice and low carbon shared transport." Hear, hear to that So everyone agrees that shared transport is a positive thing that can help us meet multiple policy objectives. The challenge is to create a coherent cross-Government departmental policy framework and support for it. I will give a few examples. First, on electric vehicle charging, car clubs are explicitly excluded from on-street residential charging schemes and are not positively included in any public funding framework or guidance. We have been told that an EV infrastructure strategy is coming "soon" for a while now, and there is also potentially a new EV infrastructure fund, but again we have not had any publication or details about that, and we have had no indication of whether any of that will necessarily improve the current position. That is despite, as I said earlier, car clubs having 11 times the proportion of EVs in their fleets as the general UK car fleet and providing access to EVs at a fraction of the cost of leasing or owning one Secondly, on guidance to local authorities, the transport decarbonisation plan promised a local authority toolkit in 2021, but that has yet to appear. It also stated that the Department would support car clubs to go fully zero-emission, recognising that, as car club fleets contain newer vehicles, they can lead the transition to zero-emission vehicles. However, again, we have not yet had any further details on that Thirdly, national planning policy still does not do enough to favour decarbonising options such as shared transport in spatial planning. Shared transport is not usually included in scheme design at all, and the national planning policy framework makes it difficult for councils to refuse applications that do not go far enough on shared transport proposals. Many good councils such as my own in Exeter want to limit parking provision and require mobility hubs and transport sharing schemes as well as good cycling and walking provision in development plans, but the planning system neither recognises nor encourages that. Mobility hubs play a particularly valuable role in areas with high levels of pollution and low sustainable transport accessibility levels, and they should be pursued by national and local government Local government should also be required to actively support shared transport to achieve modal shift, placing it at the heart of its transport strategies. It should also develop sustainable transport hierarchies to recognise the different role that shared cars play as opposed to privately owned vehicles, and include data from shared transport in official transport statistics for the area Fourthly, traffic regulation orders are cumbersome and expensive. A consultation on improving the system to make it quicker and more innovative and adaptable was promised, but again it has not appeared Fifthly, public transport accessibility levels should be updated to sustainable transport accessibility levels, which would encompass all forms of sustainable transport, including shared transport Sixthly, on taxation, the current system is based entirely on the private ownership of cars, with shared transport paying the same full rate of VAT as privately owned ones. The Treasury could help a lot by tweaking the tax regime in a revenue-neutral way, if needs be, to incentivise vehicle sharing Seventhly, we would like to know where the future of transport Bill is. It appears to be stuck somewhere in Government, meaning that we will soon reach the second anniversary of the e-scooter trials at a time when every other developed nation has either legalised and regulated them or has committed to doing so. I know that the Minister shares my enthusiasm for shared transport as a multiple solution to her transport challenges and those we all face, and I look forward with interest to her response.