Share organization Dégage!, with more than 6,000 members, calls in a memorandum for a favorable parking regime in Ghent that encourages people to share their cars. For example, it wants to make parking more expensive for non-shared cars. It also calls for increasing the number of shared cars in the city to 3,000 by 2030. Today, there are 1,000.

“There are more than 100,000 cars parked in Ghent. Many of them are underutilized,” Dégage! states in its list of policy recommendations for private car sharing in Ghent. The number of Ghent families that do not have a car or a company car is also increasing, from 12% in 2012 to 24% in 2021. In other words, one in four Ghent families does not have a car. The organization wants half of Ghent families to no longer consider a car for their exclusive use by 2030.

Dégage!, therefore, calls not only for investing in pedestrians, cyclists, and public transport but also to boost car sharing by, for example, greatly increasing the number of shared cars and giving an annual premium to people who share their car within a recognized sharing organization.

Social parking policy

Suppose you reward car owners who share their cars annually with a premium of 250 euros. This would amount to an annual cost of 250,000 euros for 1,000 additional shared cars in 2030. This could easily be financed, according to Dégage!, through an increase in parking fees, of which annual revenue today is 20 million euros.

It also wants a social parking policy to be introduced. This means making parking more expensive step by step for people who do not share their car. Fewer cars – after all, each shared car replaces four non-shared cars – would also automatically lead to more freed-up street space because parking spaces could be eliminated.

60% fewer cars by 2040

Dégage! also calls for extending the circulation plan to the neighborhoods around the city center. The Ghent city council is biting its teeth on introducing such a plan, in Sint-Amandsberg and Gentbrugge.

Finally, it also requires creating a charging infrastructure plan to construct charging infrastructure tailored to a fossil-free and car-free city. That is, the charging infrastructure plan assumes that in 2040, no more fossil cars will be driving around in Ghent, and the number of cars will be 60% lower than today. For your information, 7% of Dégage! owners own an EV.

Opinions divided

Approached for a reaction from Ghent politicians to their proposals, Dégagé! states in the newspaper Het Nieuwsblad that they are “not aligned”. “The vision of how central the car should remain in the city’s mobility differs. Some assume that phasing out car traffic leads to citizen dissatisfaction.”

Over the past year, car-sharing has gained strong popularity in Flanders and Brussels. By the end of 2023, there were over 38,000 active users and 4,159 shared cars in Flanders, or a third more than the previous year.

Most of Dégage’s members and vehicles are located in Ghent and the surrounding area, but the organization is also growing elsewhere in Flanders and Brussels. Members can access all shared cars at the same rates – fixed mileage rates with no hourly charge.