Sharing economy will open up cheaper travel options

Alex Stephany of JustPark believes that resource sharing apps are giving people access to low cost parking, car journeys, bike hire and even seats on private jets

The sharing economy is seeing more and more ordinary people take to online platforms to share their assets. I’m privileged to serve as chief executive of JustPark, the UK’s largest sharing economy company, which allows over half a million people to park on other people’s driveways at less than half the price of on-street parking.

The sharing economy is luring in serious interest from the world’s largest companies and most prestigious investors. In 2011 JustPark received funding from BMW. Earlier this year, we raised additional funding from Europe’s leading venture capital firm, Index Ventures, the technology investors behind companies like Just-Eat, Skype and Dropbox among others.

The sharing economy is not only impacting on parking. BlaBlaCar is the global leader in so-called “long-distance ridesharing”. What is long-distance ridesharing? Think of it as hitch-hiking brought kicking and screaming into the 21st century. But, instead of waiting alongside the road for a lift for free, passengers book seats online that drivers have listed for free via an app. The Paris-headquartered company now transports more than a million people every month. That’s more people than Eurostar moves. BlaBlaCar has been cited by French rail operator, SNCF, as a major competitor. This is not surprising when passengers can find identical journeys through its app which are dramatically cheaper than rail tickets and more fun.

Within cities themselves, a shorter distance form of ridesharing has emerged. The main players, US startups, Lyft and Uber, allow ordinary people to register as new-fangled taxi drivers and drive for money at times that suit them. This new form of road transport is set to become a major competitor to existing road transportation companies like National Express as well as the less technologically savvy minicab companies and black cabs. But they are also boosting the overall taxi market size by offering unparalleled convenience. Rather than having to dial for a taxi, millions of passengers around the world are now summoning taxis at the tap of an app.

Indeed, any form of transportation is now being opened up to sharing treatment. Spinlister is a platform that allows people to rent out their bicycles to each other. Boatbound is a “pier-to-pier” platform allowing boat owners to make money from their moored boats by renting them out. JumpSeat charges the rich to list empty seats on their private jets to rent to other members of their community, a process they call “aerial matchmaking”. Today, these companies are in their infancy. But the sheer economic efficiency of these new peer-to-peer models means that in the coming years, transportation companies will face their stiffest competition from their own passengers.

Alex Stephany is the chief executive of JustPark and the author of a book on the sharing economy to be published by Macmillan in 2015.
https://www.justpark.com/  

JustPark will be at Smarter Travel at the ICC Birmingham on 5-6 February 2015 with news of the latest sharing economy developments