With 300 members, the County Council’s two-year-old Car Share Club now leads the way in helping its staff find ways of reducing congestion, save money and work more flexibly.
Complementary to a new parking scheme in the county town of Lewes, the Council has launched itself as a pioneering example of charging employees to park where they work and encourage them to use alternative transport methods.
Councillor Anthony Reid, East Sussex County Council Deputy Leader and the Lead Member for Corporate Resources, said: "I am delighted that our staff are leading the way in this important area of social responsibility.
"Car sharing makes sense for all sorts of reasons. Obviously there are the environmental benefits – less congestion, reduced pollution, fewer parking problems and so on – but it can also slash people’s annual transport costs.”
The County Council’s TravelChoice web site – www.travelchoice.org – is one of hundreds in the public and private sectors hosted by Liftshare.com, the country’s biggest online car share organisation which now has more than 60,000 regular journeys registered.
Lewes District Council and Southdowns Community College have their own private groups linked to the TravelChoice site and other groups around the county are gradually being added.
Anyone can use the site which has been designed to prove a comprehensive transport information service as well as link passengers and drivers together for either regular trips or one off journeys. The site is to free to use.
Car Share Club members learnt of their success at the "Big Breakfast” held to celebrated Car Free Day – part of European Mobility Week – on Wednesday (22 September) which was held to help any members who hadn’t already found travel partners meet colleagues from their same home towns.
It resulted in several people getting together to share their journeys to and from County Hall which now has more than 30 dedicated parking spaces for car sharers.
Councillor Reid added: "We may be the number one car sharing local authority in the country, but we’re not resting on our laurels.
"We already created dedicated car share spaces for Club members and we will continue to do what we can to encourage more people to join the scheme so that they can benefit from the convenience of travelling to work by car whilst alleviating congestion.”
Reference:
04/314/JW
Contact the press team
