Anyone tried Streetcar?

[NotQuiteCockney]

It's a carshare company, seems reasonable and practical. You can rent by the hour.

Anyone tried it?

Not in my area...shame tho' looks good

It looks a bit pricy, but the cost includes petrol, which makes it a lot more reasonable. (Also, this means you don't have to fret about it being full or not, you just use a card they give you to fill it up.)

Oh, should have done a link: here .

I know a couple of people who are members of Streetcar, they don't need a car very frequently but they found it hiring a car in the usual way to be a faff. They only problem that I know one person has had is that her child's car seat is too heavy to carry to the car, so she has to leave her ds with someone when she goes to fetch the car.

Oh, yeah, that would be a bit of a hassle.

We have a carshare type arrangement at the moment, and I don't drive anyway. But our arrangement will come to an end sometime (the person we share with talks about moving away) and we'll need another arrangement then ...

There isn't really one all that close to you is there? Would you go to the one on the Isle of Dogs? The people that I know who are members both live on the Isle of Dogs, so they're only 20 mins walk from the cars. I think it would make a difference if you had to go a long way to pick the car up, if it was close you would be able to make spur of the moment decisions to use it for a short trip, eg to do a big supermarket shop.

Yeah, the Isle of Dogs one would be best, although the one near Old Street is closer. DH works down in Docklands, so it wouldn't be hard for him to pick up.

At present, we tend to use the car for the occassional Sunday lunch, trips out to the in-laws, that sort of thing. I don't impulse-drive, as I don't drive. Oh, it's good for middle-of-the-night stuff, sometimes.

If you used the Old Street one, would you have to pay congestion charge on top of the hire?

It certainly seems good value, I only use my car 5 or 6 times a month and the running costs alone (insurance, tax, servicing, mot) would probably pay for 15 or more days hire per year. If you factor in the annual depreciation and the opportunity cost (ie I could be earning interest on the money that I paid for the car) then it definitely makes sense if you can deal with the hassle of picking it up and the possibility that there might not always be a car available when you want it.

We're already used to not having a car available sometimes. And of course if we really needed a car, we could rent one, as we can now (but never do). I think EasyRentacar is probably cheaper for a weeklong-rental than these guys, but the convenience is worth quite a bit.

Well, we don't need it now, but we'll probably go for this when our neighbour goes away.

What I'm really waiting for is something like this that has a range of cars, from small to big, so that you can have a tiny one for a city trip and a big one for going away for the weekend.

Oh, and I think the Old Street one is outside the zone. You have to pay congestion charges, obviously, if you take the car in.

I think we might join Streetcar anyway, to have a backup for our current car share. It's only £25 to join, £100 deposit, with no monthly/annual fee, so there's no harm, basically.

Do you have off-street parking NQC? I was browsing around the Streetcar site and I noticed that some of them were parked on members' drives, which would obviously be very handy, although there would be a slight loss of privacy.

Bran,

We do, but it's not exactly spacious. Might be an option once we knock through, though, we'd have two spaces. I might discuss it with DH. Having a streetcar at our house would be worthwhile ...