I’ve been a member of Streetcar for over a year now. It was one of the first really major semi-eco decisions I made just after Sam was born and I wanted to become more conscious about my footprint on the planet. That and our car had just died. The decision not to buy a new one was largely about the sheer waste of a large bit of metal which cost an awful lot environmentally just sitting there in London doing nothing but rusting most of the time. 

For those of you who don’t know, Streetcar is a self-service car club where you pay a yearly fee and then hire a car by the hour. You go to the nearest one available, which you find and book online, swipe your magic card and hey presto you get a shiny nearly new VW Golf to drive.

I’d often wondered what happened if the car you’d booked in advance was in an accident and you couldn’t use it. Yesterday I found out. First they e-mail you, then they send you a text, then finally a human calls you to make sure you know and that you can find the car ok. Fantastic service made even better by a real human providing the “we’re really sorry but something out of our control happened but to make up for it…” message. 

It makes such a difference, business has become so impersonal that when it becomes personal again it becomes such an emotional moment. The final twist to this story is that when I went to pick up the car it was in someone’s driveway (they buy spaces where they can) so I had a few moments of feeling like I was a master car thief.