City Car Club, Scotland Manager
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Local Authority case study – Edinburgh The case study draws on interviews with Keith Stark (City Car Club, Scotland Manager), Andrew McBride (Development Control, City of Edinburgh Council), Gavin Brown (CEC Parking Manager) as well as material drawn from planning documents. In addition we have used archive material assembled by Chas Ball 1, who researched this case study. 1 Policy Evolution The Edinburgh City Car Club was first considered in the mid 1990s, stimulated by experience of other cities in Europe particularly Bremen, Germany. Following research by LEAP, an environmental NGO, a plan was adopted in 1997. Early work included securing acceptance of permit based on-street parking, which involved a new regulatory framework. With Scottish Office approval in early 1998, Edinburgh became the first UK city to establish a pay as you drive self-service car club. Through tenders, the selected operator was Budget Car & Van Rental. It launched in autumn 1999 with an initial fleet of over 20 cars using 15 on street locations. After over 2 years operation, with many technical glitches, the operator gave notice and the scheme was temporarily stopped in March 2001 as the operator withdrew. In autumn 2001 the service resumed, operated by Smart Moves Ltd with 14 cars, using a new Swedish provider of in-car telematics, Drive-IT and over half the members signed up as members with the new operator, Smart Moves. To secure the operator role Smart Moves made a successful tender to CEC beating a rival bid from Avis Rent-a-Car. Over the ensuing years this evolved into City Car Club, which had by then established larger operations in Bristol as well as in London and Brighton. With strong political support from the beginning, policy support for car clubs has evolved into mainstream transport strategy over time, and by about 2004 all the political parties that made up City of Edinburgh Council had got behind the scheme once it demonstrated that despite 1 Chas Ball was a director of Smart Moves/City Car Club from 2000 – 2007 and led the implementation of the Smart Moves as the new operators of the Edinburgh car club from 2001. Subsequently he continued to work on developing support for car clubs in Scotland, first with Transform Scotland (sustainable transport NGO) and from 2010 until the end of 2014 for Carplus Trust in Scotland. the setbacks in its early years, it was proving popular, delivering improved utilisation and re-establishing the service throughout the inner areas year by year. Edinburgh planners had already begun to look at the potential to place conditions on developers to provide support for the car club. The earliest S.75 agreements date from 2002 and by the end of 2007 there were over 25 S.75 agreements in place Supplementary Planning Guidance on car clubs was adopted by CEC in 2004 and is part of an approach that allows developers more flexibility on parking ratios if car club on-street parking is increased locally. This was incorporated into Planning Guidelines and sits within Additional Policies “Parking Standards for Development Management” which includes a section on Car Clubs that sets out council policy and practice: 3 Car Club An increasing number of residents find that pay-as-you-go motoring is cheaper and more convenient than owning a car and have joined a Car Club. The Council actively supports this concept through the development control process. Hence, for new residential developments, the Council will require parking spaces for Car Club vehicles, and a financial contribution towards costs. Prospective residents should be made aware of the facility, especially where a Residential Travel Plan is required. For residential developments, especially large ones, Car Club spaces and vehicles can reduce the number of permanent parking spaces required and, therefore, early discussions with the Council should be held to agree any potential relaxations. Car Club vehicles are also used by private businesses as fleet vehicles or instead of a staff member using a private car for business. As a result, the Council may require commercial developments to provide Car Club facilities. Other types of development may also be required to provide such facilities, especially when located close to residential areas that could also make use of the vehicles. Application of Policy In December 2015 there were 158 car club vehicles in Edinburgh of which 7 were vans and 30% were hybrids or plug-in electric vehicles and 2 in excess of 5000 members. Edinburgh has had one operator, City Car Club, working in partnership with CEC since it sought tenders in 2002 and this has been extended. A new process of re-tendering this service continuing the single operator, back-to-base model, commenced in November 2015. In 1999 it was awarded to Budget after a tendering process for the first- ever commercial car club in Britain. Although there were over 20 locations provided this scheme failed to deliver the required utilisation and was consistently unreliable. It ceased in March 2002 and was taken over after an operating gap of 6 months by Smart Moves Ltd, which had launched in Bristol in 2000. It restarted by re-signing about 150 of the earlier members and providing 14 cars with improved in-car telematics. By 2005 it had changed its brand and then its name to City Car Club and the company had established a presence in London and Brighton & Hove as well as Edinburgh and Bristol. Its operations centre and administration has been in West Yorkshire since 2002. Over the past decade the application of developer agreements through S. 75 of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 has contributed significantly to the creation of the on-street parking infrastructure for the car club scheme in Edinburgh. Although the early started in residential areas close to the city centre like Marchmont and Stockbridge, it has grown in most areas of high and medium density housing throughout the city council’s area and provided a service at some mixed developments, too. [see map – requested from City Car Club] Throughout the city, the majority of the city’s permit-controlled car club parking infrastructure has been funded by developer contribution. Generally these are in the streets adjacent to a development and may be used by all local residents as well as local employers. Although little of Edinburgh’s car club parking is located on developer’s land, some large developments provide accessible off-street car club parking where on- street kerb space is in short supply. However, for a few years from 2007, London-based Streetcar operated cars off-street at Edinburgh Waverley station and Edinburgh Airport. Prior to the merger with Zipcar in 2011 these were withdrawn with the 3 company pledged to concentrate on London and a small number of affluent southern cities (Cambridge, Oxford and Bristol). To implement the council’s policy on car clubs, planning officers dealing with transport related development control issues have been increasingly adept at identifying developments that may be suitable for a car club. City of Edinburgh Council has benefitted from a relatively stable team of planning officers who clearly understand and can articulate the benefits of the car club to a developer. Since 2014 the level of developer contributions that may be sought by CEC is codified in the updated development guidelines. At an early stage officers seek guidance from the operator on the potential viability of a proposed scheme. With a clear set of options in the form of a published cost tariff for developer contributions, some or all of the early set up and operating costs can be funded. The test applied is that if these costs were not supported, a loss to the operator would result over the first year or two of the scheme when final construction and full occupation are still to be achieved. Through consultation between planning officers and the car club operator, most developments have included one or more of the following elements: Support for costs of a TRO – public consultation (advertising), lining and signing 1) Support for the first year operating cost of a car club car 2) Support for residents to try out the car club without needing to pay membership etc. and in some cases receive driving credits The current contribution levels are set out in the Council’s Transport Developer Contributions Guidelines. By the end of 2014 this had reached [XX] agreements some of which relate to larger developments like Quartermile (see below) and others relate to small changes of use that create a handful of apartments. Each year since 2002 the Council has identified new developments and conversions (mainly to flats) where following consultation with all parties, the developer is conditioned to make a contribution to the car club. In many instances this will compensate for the lack of availability of 4 off-street parking and to allow in some cases for higher densities of residential housing or mixed development. This has helped to create a pipeline of on-street locations that are anticipated over several years with new developments and with conversions over a somewhat shorter lead time. As a result the areas of the city where the operator has agreed to located cars has slowly expanded outwards from its early roots in Marchmont and Sciennes in the south and Stockbridge in the north to encompass all but the low density and rural perimeter areas within the city council boundary. With well over half of the city’s on-street parking bays set up since 2002 supported by contributions from developers, the impact of new developments on parking pressure has been reduced.