28/06/08 - Carshareswindon.com

Nearly 200 Swindonians have signed up to the new car-sharing scheme for Swindon amid speculation that petrol prices are set to rise even higher.

www.carshareswindon.com enables people to join a network for free, in order to find a suitable partner to share car journeys to any destination and so help reduce the cost of motoring.

According to the website autocar.co.uk petrol prices could hit 8 a gallon by the end of the year, with diesel prices anticipated to be as high as 9 per gallon.

People can access the scheme from home or from work at www.carshareswindon.comand register their journey details for free. The system will then tell them if anyone else is going in the same direction, leaving it up to them to make contact through a secure messaging service.

As well as reducing travel costs, the scheme also makes it easier to reduce your carbon footprint by helping to cut the number of unnecessary car trips, whilst reducing congestion and pollution in the local area.

The software behind the system has been provided by the specialist car-sharing company, liftshare, which has established more than 200 car-sharing schemes for communities across the UK.

liftshare now has nearly 230,000 members registered on one central database. This means that each user can choose whether to look for lifts within their own community, or from the whole liftshare database, thereby increasing the likelihood that they'll find a match to their journey requirements.

Marc Argent, Travel Awareness Officer for Swindon Borough Council explains:
"A typical carshareswindon.com member can save around 1,000 and a tonne of CO2 every year by sharing their daily journey. It takes just a few moments to get registered and you don't even need to own a car to take part. The other great thing about carshareswindon.com is that you decide when, how often and with whom you share - so why not start off by sharing your journey to work just once a week and go from there!"

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The first 1000 people to register at www.carshareswindon.com can claim their free carshareswindon Cotton Shopper Bag to help Swindon reduce the consumption of single use plastic bags which pollute the environment and endanger wildlife. Visit www.carshareswindon.com for more details.

Cllr Justin Tomlinson, "This is an excellent scheme that potentially can help reduce congestion and save local residents money. Please do let me know if you sign up as I would interested in how it helps you."