What’s green, cool, cheap and makes you thin?

I’m saved. I’m a member of the win-win club

I have discovered something that cuts pollution, saves the planet, solves our transport woes, makes you thin, and gives you a warm community glow every time you use it. It is, of course, a car (well, sort of, we’ll get to the fine print later).

And the most amazing thing about this invention is that it could solve our nation’s impasse between militant car-haters, and car-hater haters. It is, as politicians would love to say, a third way. But how do we know this is the future? Because the Government has ignored it.

Let’s start with an old joke. When Labour came to power, John Prescott proclaimed: “I will have failed if in five years time there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car. It’s a tall order but I urge you to hold me to it.” Since then, 4.5 million more private cars are on the roads, congestion is rising, and fewer people travel by public transport. Ha ha ha.

I was chortling away too about good ole Two Jags, how we miss him, until I happened on a terrible new thought. I had lived my life according to Mr Prescott’s tenets. While most people cheerfully bought that second little runabout, I had thrown away my car keys. That made me a kind of Prescott disciple. Who was more the fool now, him or me? Here are things I personally blame him for.

1) My lacklustre love life
Although I didn’t need a car to get to work, I quickly discovered it was crucial for getting any action. Not just for “making out” in, cars were essential to a romantic mini-break. I once tried to book a weekend to Liverpool – before discovering that it would take nearly six tedious hours to return by train. I suddenly got it: the State penalises drivers by fining, tolling and taxing. But it doesn’t try to make it any easier for you to go by train. In fact, it wants you to stay at home. Which is what I did, watching reruns of Brookside on Living TV instead. I was a loser.

2) My miserable home life
Without a car, I was deprived of my basic human right to visit Ikea. I bought expensive furniture from department stores, just like people did in the 1970s.

3) My low status
On a bike, I was roadkill (cheers, Labour for how little you’ve done to make that safer!). I had raw welts on my palms from carrying home plastic bags of onions on the bus. Not only was I a loveless, tasteless loser, I didn’t even have the enormously large set of keys that men whop out of their pockets to represent their manhood.

Despite all this, I was not only too cheap to get a car (the AA Motoring Trust estimates a medium-sized car costs £2,600 a year before you put a drop of petrol in), I was too lazy. The amount of administration required for my tiny life already made me want to walk into the sea, I couldn’t bear to add MoTs, insurance, council permits and fines. And that is before you even get to parking. Modern hell must be circling your home in ever-widening loops, as your dinner cools and your baby weeps.

Did I mention the baby? Because, despite the predictions of friends, my partner and I became far too lazy to buy a car after having a child. To everyone who set out yesterday on Black Friday (the worst day of the year on the roads), enduring the entire family’s traffic-induced tantrums, I can only say I’m not jealous. And while I admire women who, solo, and daily, manhandle a buggy in the boot and a baby in the back, I couldn’t do it. I mean those five-point car seat harnesses are fiddly enough when sober, let alone when you’re blind drunk (just kidding!).

So is there some kind of support group for us doomed, carless Prescottians? Turns out there is – it’s called a car club. When one sprung up in our area, we joined immediately: three cars, each parked within a five to ten-minute walk of our flat, bookable – often at very short notice – by text or phone. It cost us no membership fee, no deposit, and the £5 an hour includes petrol and insurance. The “smartcard” for the ignition is the coolest thing in my wallet. I got that astonished feeling when an organisation in Britain works well. We were saved.

You can now have your cake, eat it and not get fat. You can drive a swish VW Golf, save money, the planet, and your waistline (research shows that car club users walk and use other kinds of transport more than before). That’s no mean feat in a society that was dubbed “obesogenic” in a report this week.

Before we get carried away, let’s remember that, like us, not everyone sacrifices a car to join a club. Streetcar, the largest organisation with 20,000 members, says half of their customers give up their own cars, other research suggests it’s only about a third. But, with each car in the club getting 40 users, that’s still a dozen or so cars off the road. Car clubs are not for everyone – but the European example shows that the maximum is probably about one in six car users.

So even though private car clubs are booming, they have a long way to go. The charity Carplus wants to introduce the scheme in the countryside (this sounds nuts, but pilots where people share the “village car” have gone very well). And for either to get where they’re going faster, they need a bit of help.

Help, such as pressurising cities to exclude car clubs from congestion charges (a no-brainer). Or fast-tracking their assigned parking spaces. Or chivvying more local authorities to include car-club provision in planning permission. Or providing a national symbol for car clubs, so that it could be put on road signs. Or, for that matter, allotting space to car-club cars at regional train stations, to encourage city folk to use the train for most of their journey. These recommendations were given to the Department for Transport in a report it commissioned from University College London two years ago. They cost little. They were roundly ignored.

Here’s a totally free initiative for politicians. Just talk about – or even use – the damn things. Car clubs should send the eco-windmills spinning in David Cameron’s head: private enterprise meets fashionable global warrior, and at no dent to his spending plans. He’s never uttered the phrase in public. Gordon Brown could improve his image no end by putting forward a practical, positive solution to our transport nightmare, instead of making life tough for car users and non-car users alike. He’s not interested. This short-sightedness is stupid, and puzzling. Obviously this is a job for the big guns: come back Prezza – all is forgiven.

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