Travel Demand Management > Carsharing                          Printer-friendly version

What Is It?

• Carsharing can be thought of as organized short-term car rental.
• Members of a carsharing organization access the vehicles from shared-use lots (e.g., transit station, neighborhoods, and employment centers).
• Fees typically cover maintenance, insurance, registration, fueling, and time use.
• Urban carsharing with linkages to transit is the predominant shared-use vehicle model. However, several new models are being tested (e.g., employer-based carsharing, such as CarLink; resorts; gated communities; etc.).
• Existing carsharing organizations typically provide a choice of vehicle type, rate, and convenience suited to participant needs.

Carsharing efforts have proven viable where:

• Population is dense (i.e., urban);
• Alternative modes of transportation are easily accessible (e.g., people who commute to work by transit or carpool but need vehicles for errands and weekend travel);
• Disincentives to driving are prevalent, such as parking costs and congestion;
• Service attributes are offered (e.g., preferred parking at transit stations) that favor the substitution of a shared-use vehicle for trips that otherwise might have been driven alone;
• Vehicles can be easily accessed by different user groups in mixed land-use areas; and
• Environmental consciousness is high.

Key results include:

• More careful consideration of the necessity of car trips, duration and distance of travel, and modal alternatives and as a result decreased auto use and ownership.
• Cost savings to individuals and employers;
• Energy and emissions savings;
• Increased transit ridership; and
• Decreased parking demand.

• While carsharing has been implemented in Europe since the 1940s on a small scale (i.e., 10 to 20 cars), more widespread and successful efforts began in Europe (particularly Switzerland and Germany) in the mid-1980s.
• Approximately 200 carsharing organizations are active in 450 cities throughout Switzerland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Great Britain, and Italy.
• Mobility Carsharing Switzerland, the largest carsharing organization, has over 1,200 cars and operates in over 800 locations in 300 communities, with over 27,000 members. It is run by one enterprise as a public-private partnership (e.g., with linkages to Swiss Rail) and serves as a model for carsharing potential throughout Europe.
• Since the mid-1990s interest in carsharing has grown in North America (San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Toronto). At present, there are ten carsharing organizations in North America (operating without smart technologies). Five are run as for-profit businesses, and the rest are run as nonprofit cooperatives. Five of the ten are located in Canada. Another two are planned on the West Coast, and a third should launch in Chicago in 2000 (known as ShareCarGo).
• In 1999, two "smart" carsharing demonstration programs were deployed in California: 1) CarLink (the CarLink study results can be found by linking to reports listed below), and 2) Intellishare (a UC Riverside and Honda effort).
• There are several carsharing demonstration programs in Asia, particularly in Japan and Singapore, and there is a growing interest in Australia and Latin America, although no projects currently exist.

Links

European car sharing
http://www.carsharing.org/

World carshare consortium
http://www.ecoplan.org/carshare/cs_index.htm

National station car association
http://www.stationcarinfo.com/

San Francisco car sharing
http://www.citycarshare.org/

Flexcar
http://www.flexcar.com/

Cooperative auto network- Vancouver
http://www.cooperativeauto.net/

Autoshare - Toronto
http://www.cooperativeauto.net/

Car sharing library
http://www.carsharing.net/library/

Author: Susan Shaheen