80% More People Lift-Sharing, Despite Rishi Sunak’s Carpool U-turn

As the prime minister announced his rollback of net zero pledges, including cancelling a compulsory car-pooling policy that never existed, it’s doubtful he even knew it was National Liftshare Week. The week, that is spearheaded each year by the UK & Ireland’s largest car-sharing platform, Liftshare, aims to get more people sharing rides. Despite the negative attention brought on car-pooling by the PM, that’s exactly what it did – with an 80% uptick in liftsharers across September this year.

National Liftshare Week, which ran from 18-24^th September, also saw a 60% increase in journeys added to the Liftshare platform. The week was backed by promotional activity from Liftshare, its Mobilityways group clients and local community groups involved in liftsharing.

This tops off an already record-breaking year for numbers of people liftsharing. Mobilityways managing director Julie Furnell recently commented: “We are celebrating our silver jubilee year, saving 1 billion miles from UK roads and our best ever summer for new Liftshare members, all without mandatory policies from the Government.”

This was in reference to a record-breaking summer for new Liftshare members. 23,000 people joined the platform across July and August, which is double the same period last year. In fact, in the first nine months of 2023 the same number of people joined Liftshare as in the whole of 2022.

The boost in Liftshare members is thanks to Liftshare teaming up with Esso on their Thoughtful Driving campaign, encouraging people to take one less journey. As part of the initiative, Esso is helping to increase Liftshare’s exposure to get more people sharing.

As a social enterprise, Liftshare offers its journey-matching service free of charge to members of the public. Liftshare community manager, Amy Young, says: “People use Liftshare for multiple reasons – to have company on their journey and do their bit for the environment. Drivers want to split the cost of fuel, plus many enjoy helping others get from A to B more affordably and conveniently. For those who don’t drive, it can be the case that public transport is too expensive or not feasible where they live.”