GoGet CarShare: Who needs to own a car?

As good as Sydney public transport is, you can't always substitute the good old motor vehicle for convenience. Mel and I are not keen to buy a car of our own in Sydney given we live in Balmain (that's inner west of the city) and we'd only use it maybe once (or max twice) a week, the costs associated just don't make it worthwhile (trust me I've done the math)! Not to mention the extra environmental cost every time someone runs a car of their own.

A few friends had talked about car sharing through GoGet, a company started by a couple in Newtown, Sydney to cater for people just like us - don't need a car of our own all the time and don't want the hassles usually associated with rental car companies (hire by the day only, limited pick-up options). In a nutshell, GoGet have what they call 'pods' of cars all over Sydney (and now some other parts of Australia apparently) which are basically cars parked in designated spaces in safe and well lit areas that you lock/unlock using your membership card that's programmed to know when you've booked that car. You can go online or book by phone and if there is a car available at the time you book you can just go ahead and pick it up straight away - happy days. The beauty is you only book for what you need, so if you just want to get some heavy shopping done you book for 1 hour and go do it!

The rates are pretty good, there are a couple of different packages depending on how often you think you'll use the service but we are paying $9 p/month prepaid membership + $7.50 p/hour usage + $0.35 p/km usage - GoGet pays for all petrol. They do day rates as well, which makes it more cost effective if you need a car for more than just a few hours.

Our first experience using GoGet yesterday was easy enough, their online system knows what it's doing, Malcolm the Yaris was waiting about 10 mins walk from our house and made it out to Palm Beach and back no trouble!

BTW - Palm Beach is bloody nice, caught a few nice waves on my body board and was kinda wishing I had a surf board out there given there were only about 5 of us around to see me try something I've not done since I was about 16!

Cheers
Tim