This Friday (22 September) is World Car Free Day, a day where many cities across the world encourage people to not use the cars for a full day, swapping them for greener alternatives like walking or cycling.

World Car Free Day in Kuala Lumpar. Image Source: thesundaily.my

Last year (September 2016) Paris joined the list of cities involved in World Car Free Day, alongside Jakarta, Brussels, Kuala Lumpar, Copenhagen and Bogota, who totally ban cars from certain roads in their city centres. This allows them to see what their cities could be like without cars, and with significantly less pollution.

Following the recent announcement of banning the manufacture of petrol and diesel vehicles in the UK from 2040, perhaps days like World Car Free Day will be introduced to London, something that was hinted at by Mayor Sadiq Khan according to an article in the Guardian a year ago.

A poll by YouGov in 2016 showed that 63% of Londoners were supportive of motor vehicles being banned from the central third of the city, and 58% were supportive of having a ban every month! Sadly, London has yet to get involved, but smaller areas across the UK are having their own World Car Free Day, including Shoreditch, London and Cardiff, Wales.

Is your local area taking part in World Car Free Day? How will you be getting around?

Drive more efficiently

Next time you get in the car, think about the way you drive. Do you accelerate hard after stopping, or do you gradually increase your speed? Do you brake late when approaching congestion and red traffic lights, even though you’ve seen it coming from far away? Do you check your tyre pressure regularly or only inflate when they’re noticeably low? Do you have your car regularly serviced or do you just do the bare minimum legal requirement?
Driving efficiently could save you money. If your car has the functionality, change the settings so you can monitor your miles per gallon (mpg) so you can get an idea of how efficient your driving is.
The MPG of a car varies depending on several factors, but you can increase the MPG by driving more smoothly (slowing down by allowing the car to come to a stop rather than braking – if safe to do so), accelerating slowly, and regularly servicing your car so that it’s always running in good condition.
For cheaper fuel, use websites like petrolprices.com so you know which is the cheapest garage in a certain area, and remember that motorway service stations tend to charge more than local ones. Filling up in the town near you might be significantly cheaper than pulling into a services (if you can wait!)

Split Ticketing

Use split ticketing apps for your train journeys to find the cheapest way to get to your destination. Split ticketing works on the concept that many journeys are actually cheaper by buying separate tickets for parts of the same journey, rather than buying one ticket for the whole journey. For example, sometimes it may be cheaper to buy a single from London Euston to Milton Keynes and a single from Milton Keynes to Birmingham rather than a ticket from London Euston to Birmingham. There are a few apps and websites like Ticket Clever and Train Pro that can automatically work out the cheapest ticket combinations without affecting your journey. Give it a go next time and see how much you can save.

Use cashback/reward sites

If you do end up paying more money than you’d like for your transport, you might as well be rewarded for it somehow. There are several credit cards that reward spending, like the British Airways AMEX card or the Virgin Atlantic White card. There are also cashback websites that give cashback when booking through companies including National Express and Virgin Trains like TopCashBack and QuidCo to make your purchases work harder.
Supermarket loyalty schemes Nectar and Clubcard also allow you to swap your points for non-supermarket related benefits, like giving you money off train or coach tickets.

Good luck and happy travelling!