2. Work, Housing and Transport, without Private Cars
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Supply and demand established online
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Dynamic pay-per-use rate agreed
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Trading-in private cars
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Capital and operational costs combined
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Return on investment from VCC
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Voluntary Carbon Credits bought by polluters
Brompton Bicycle are planning to build a new factory in Ashford, which will be free from private cars. If this is combined with the development of car-free housing for employees, a reduction in car ownership could be achieved and overall costs reduced.
One problem is that the active travel infrastructure required has no way to generate revenue. Transport Groups can bundle the capital costs of infrastructure with the pay-per-use rates of other transport services, or housing rent. It can also validate the reduced emissions from owning fewer cars and issue VCC to provide a return on investment. That investment can come from households selling their cars, so no new funding is required, and the carbon rebound effect is avoided.
Building car-free work and housing 'prompts' people, who have a compatible need for shared transport, to form Transport Groups. This shifts financial responsibility, for new transport services, from providers to users. A household can reduce its costs from day one, because there is no transition period during which new services and private cars both exist at the same time. In effect, private cars are traded-in for alternatives that meet the same needs.
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Drivers who use a carshare vehicle, for example, want to be confident: 'It will be there when I need it'. Providers want to be confident that the costs of a service will be covered. Members of a Transport Group establish compatible supply and demand using a decentralised form of crowdfunding, where the end point is commitment to a smart contract, which manages access and pay-per-use rates for the new services involved. The smart contract exists on a decentralised blockchain and receives real world data about use and provision of transport assets via an oracle network.
Smart contracts use dynamic pay-per-use rates to combine the capital and running costs of new services that are interdependent. They can also generate a return on investment by issuing Voluntary Carbon Credits (VCC).
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300 households each selling two cars and moving to a car-free estate could invest more than £5 million
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A return on this investment comes from the Transport Group issuing VCC
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VCC are bought by polluters, such as 3.5 million people parking in nearby retail outlet
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The money trapped by cars is invested in sustainable share transport and polluters provide the return on this investment
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Brompton Bicycle’s proposed car-free factory in Ashford is an opportunity to develop Transport Groups that link work, housing and transport. The map below shows planned housing developments within cycling distance of the Brompton factory, all of which require new cycling infrastructure, bikes and access to carshare.
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