Car sharing isn’t compulsory – but is it the sustainable transport hack of the future?

Compulsory car-sharing has been officially scrapped by the prime minister. The announcement took many in transport circles by surprise, since the only place in the known world where the practice has ever been mandatory is communist Cuba; there were no proposals to adopt it in the UK.

Yet perhaps Rishi Sunak’s surprise pledge might encourage travellers to look again at car sharing as an option on environmental and economic grounds.

These are the key questions and answers.

What does car sharing mean?

Either the vehicle is shared on some kind of rota basis, or the journey is shared, with the driver joined by other people.

Examples of the first kind are as fundamental as a couple or family sharing a single car, with people taking turns to use the vehicle. Now, though, there are commercial organisations who will put car owners keen on a bit of extra cash in touch with people who want the use of a car for a few hours or days.

Companies that do this include Toro and Hiyacar.

There is some overlap with the many “street hire” schemes such as Zipcar and Enterprise Car Club where vehicles (often vans as well as cars) are available on a first-come, first-served basis from a roadside near you. Payment is usually by the hour.

However, most people understand car sharing to mean inviting others to join the driver – also known as car pooling.

A brief history of car pooling?

The oldest form is the ad hoc practice of hitchhiking – which remains the least environmentally damaging form of motorised transport. The passenger hops in for a portion of the journey that the driver would be making anyway. Curiously, hitchhiking is safer than it has ever been, but at the same time increasingly a minority sport.

Communist countries have deployed official car pooling schemes. Until Poland gained its independence, motorists were encouraged to give lifts using a voucher scheme: the hitchhiker would buy a book of coupons for various journey lengths and hand over the appropriate value at the end of the ride. The driver could then redeem them for prizes.

Cuba took a rather more heavy handed approach. Official traffic monitors, dressed in yellow and known as amarillos, were assigned to main roads leaving towns and cities. They would instruct all official vehicles to stop and take as many passengers as they could from the gathered crowd.

In 1973, special lanes for “high…