Zipcar’s withdrawal from London represents a failure by the capital’s transport authorities, politicians at City Hall have said, with just one week left until the service is set to close.
The car-sharing platform has about 550,000 members in London, who rent cars and vans by the hour or for a day via an app, and pick up the vehicles from parking spaces.
But bookings are due to be suspended after New Year’s Eve, pending a consultation with 71 staff members about the future of the American-owned business.
As with hire bikes, the mayor and Transport for London does not have any power over car-sharing platforms in the capital. Instead, operators have to strike their own deals with each of the 32 boroughs instead, paying wildly different fees to each of them.
The London Assembly’s transport committee said that Transport for London has “shown a complete lack of progress on this thinking with regard to car clubs”, and that it should have used its influence to bring councils, operators and the shared transport charity CoMoUK together to map out the future.
In April, the committee had produced a report warning that London was “a very hard city for car club operators to work in”, saying that TfL and the mayor needed to work with the boroughs to improve matters.
Rates for car club bays across London’s boroughs vary wildly . Image: The Greenwich Wire
Elly Baker, the Labour assembly member that chairs the committee, said; “There is no sense of urgency from TfL on this issue. There is currently a patchwork approach to car clubs in London and they are failing to reach their full potential.
“We heard from TfL that it is working to update its six commitments on car clubs, and this work will continue in the new year. Yet, if Zipcar goes ahead with its proposal [to close], 90 per cent of London’s car club market will have disappeared by then.
“TfL must take action now to ensure that car club provision in London does not disappear entirely.”
The committee wants TfL to ensure that parking bays used by Zipcar are taken over by other operators, to make sure that it helps fund parking bays for boroughs, and to work with councils and other bodies to co-ordinate how car clubs work in London.
In Greenwich, the council has deals with Zipcar, Enterprise and Hiyacar. In June, it increased its charges for car club bays from £183 a year to £280 – but this was still well below some other boroughs, with Lambeth charging £793 and Kensington & Chelsea up to £2,380.
The car club industry warned earlier this year that increases to the central London congestion charge that begin next week, including the scrapping of an exemption for electric cars, would seriously affect operations in the capital.
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