Car pooling comes to Palma

PALMA
WITH the soaring cost of fuel and gloomy predictions over global warming, drivers who have been looking for ways to cut their travelling costs were faced with the perfect opportunity yesterday when Palma City Council announced a car sharing scheme .

People living in the Balearic capital will have the chance to go to work and to their study or leisure centres through a new system to be introduced over the coming weeks on City Hall's website. Vehicle users will be able to split costs of petrol and driving responsibility, not to mention halving their carbon footprint, through signing on to a car share programme.

Loida Sanchez, representative from “Compartir S.L.” said that the company manages a network covering 69 municipalities nationwide, local organisations and business groups. A facility has been set up on the internet where drivers offer their vehicles for the scheme and publish the routes they travel on a regular basis so as to be able to make contact with others who do the same journey. The aim is to enable mutual interests to team up and come to an arrangement over journey and costs, in theory being able to save at least 50 percent of what they have to spend alone. The service has been functioning elsewhere in Spain since 2000 through www.compartir.org from where drivers can access the websites of different local authorities across the country.