Morning Session: Lessons from Car Clubs in mainland Europe

Michael Glotz-Richter,
City of Bremen, Germany

Michael is Senior Project Manager of Sustainable Mobility, City of Bremen. He played an important part in the 1990s in raising awareness in Edinburgh about car sharing clubs by explaining how they were operating then in German cities. Michael will show how an integrated approach to public transport, car clubs and urban planning can make progress in reducing the dependency on private cars. He will talk briefly about Bremen’s integrated mobility solution, mobil.punkt.

Dr Jillian Anable
University of Aberdeen

Jillian is Senior Lecturer in Transport Studies, University of Aberdeen, and will be presenting her perspective on “car clubs, smarter choices and climate change.” She is the Transport and Aviation Topic Leader for the UK Energy Research Centre. Her research focus is on transport and climate change with particular emphasis on demand reduction and market transformation within the transport sector. She is also working on the Phase II research on Smarter Choices to evaluate for the Department for Transport the progress made over the past few years in the three English Sustainable Travel Demonstration Towns and elsewhere. Jillian is chair of the board at Carplus.

Joachim Schwarz
Cambio Mobility Services, Germany

Joachim is Chief Executive of the largest car sharing operator in Germany which provides services to a number of independent German car clubs. Cambio also runs a car sharing network in Belgium in partnership with a not-for-profit company, using the same central booking and billing engine.

Joachim will offer key lessons from 18 years of operational experience in mainland European including the importance of setting high service standards. With some parallels and numerous differences to the British experience, he will help us to envisage the sector’s potential for development in Britain during the coming decade.

Diane McLafferty
Acting Director Transport Directorate, Scottish Government

Lessons from the first 10 years

Chas Ball
Independent consultant, founder of City Car Club

Chas Ball will explore the lessons learnt from operating a car club in Edinburgh for a decade. Edinburgh City Car Club was initially run by Budget Rentacar. Chas was at the helm of City Car Club (then trading as Smart Moves), when it took over the Edinburgh scheme in 2002, after a brief period when the future of the scheme seemed uncertain – and some experts to this day talk about its “failure”. Using a combination of better technology and closer partnership with the City of Edinburgh Council, the scheme has grown organically throughout the centre of Edinburgh and in many urban centres to provide a local network of close on 90 cars – with 100 expected by the time of the conference.

Marshall Poulton
Head of Transport, City of Edinburgh Council

Marshall Poulton is Head of Transport with the City of Edinburgh Council. He joined the Council in 2008 from Transport for London where he was Head of Technology and Major Projects. In this post Marshall delivering systems for real time traffic management in London. He also worked in partnership with the Olympic Delivery Authority to deliver the strategic direction for the planning and delivery of transport for London’s 2012 Olympic Games.  Prior to this he worked at Glasgow City Council, most recently as Head of Planning, Policy and Design, where he was involved in delivering Quality Bus Corridors, completion of the M74 project, public realm, Glasgow’s City Centre Millenium Plan and regeneration of the River Clyde Waterfront. A trained Civil Engineer, Marshall started his career at Strathclyde Regional Council as a Principal Engineer.

James Finlayson
CEO, City Car Club

James leads one of Britain’s four commercial car club operators, City Car Club, which operates car clubs in six UK cities. James is a serial entrepreneur who spotted the growth in car clubs in 2006 and become a private investor and later, CEO of the company.
City Car Club has seen Edinburgh develop into the largest car club operation outside of London. Based on the lessons and experience of Edinburgh, James will look at the prospects for the car club sector in other larger cities and towns and identify what operators are looking for from local authorities and transport operators.

Question Time

Rob Edwards
Environment Correspondent, Sunday Herald (Glasgow)

Rob Edwards has been a freelance journalist specialising in environmental issues for more than 25 years, writing for The Guardian, The Observer, the Sunday Times, The Herald, The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday. Since 1999 he has been the environment editor of the Sunday Herald and a correspondent for New Scientist. He has also produced several TV and radio programmes, and co-written three books about nuclear power. He lives in Edinburgh, likes muckraking and rides a bike.
Link to website.