Car Clubs Conference 2009
'Using Car Clubs to create more sustainable towns & cities' was held in March this year, co-hosted with the City of Edinburgh Council. As well as an opportunity to examine how car clubs were working in many European cities, we were celebrating the 10th anniversary of
Edinburgh City Car Club's - the most successful car club in the UK outside London.
The international event,
, which was also sponsored by SEStran, examined the growing significance of car clubs as more people, including employers, look for alternatives to car ownership. It highlighted Edinburgh’s own car club, the largest and most successful outside of London, which was celebrating its 10th anniversary. There was a technical tour of the car club prior to the main event and a reception hosted by the City of Edinburgh Council, at which the Transport Minister, Stewart Stevenson, spoke.
The conference brought together practitioners from throughout Europe and the UK, academics and politicians to discuss the value of car clubs, and share experiences and best practice. These included Michael Glotz Richter (Sustainable Mobility, City of Bremen) who visited Edinburgh a decade ago to explain how “car sharing” was working in Germany, and Dr Jillian Anable (Aberdeen University) who is working on travel demand management for the UK Energy Research Centre and on Smart Choices Phase II.
To download a conference report,
click here.
As a result of the conference, the Trust is taking forward a project to review the current provisions for promoting car clubs in Scotland, and how this can be improved to enable more communities to benefit.