Car Sharing
Overview[edit | edit source]
Car sharing is a membership-based service that allows people to rent cars for short periods of time, typically by the hour. Car sharing Organizations (CSO’s) maintain a fleet of vehicles that are available for the personal use of their members. Members of CSO’s are able to rent a vehicle by the minute, hour, or day. Members who have a monthly membership are typically allotted an amount of time they can use a day or week. CSO’s provide the insurance, parking, and fuel costs for members all included in the cost of the rental. Car share vehicles are generally available for pickup in highly urbanized settings such as downtown's, university campuses and other high-demand areas. CSO’s are set up in many ways, this including for-profit companies, cooperatives, and not for profits.
Timeline[edit | edit source]
- 1948: Sefage Founded in Switzerland
- 2000: Zipcar Founded
- 2007: Zipcar Acquires Flexcar
- 2008: Car2Go Founded in Germany
- 2015: BlueLA Awarded Grant from CCI
- 2017: Gig Car Share Founded
Analysis of Implications[edit | edit source]
Effects on Travel Demand Management[edit | edit source]
Car sharing has been received with diverse reactions from transportation professionals. In an ideal case car sharing would reduce the vehicle miles traveled (VMT), parking demand, and road congestion in urban city centers. Many case studies have shown that car sharing generally attracts populations already using alternative transportation modes. By attracting users already using alternatives to a personal vehicle the VMT and road congestion have been seen to get worse in some cases as people who did not have access to a vehicle can now choose that transportation mode.
Effects on Trip Generation[edit | edit source]
Car sharing gives users the ability to make personal trips that before were not available to them. The ability for those who traditionally did not have the means to travel farther for goods and services now exists. Due to this case studies show that users of car sharing generated more trips as well as longer trips then they historically had without access to a personal vehicle.
Equity[edit | edit source]
Equity is a key concept within car sharing. Through studies it has been shown that for-profit car sharing companies have a high density of vehicles within high income neighborhoods. The same companies were shown to have reduced or no fleet within low income and minority neighborhoods. Beyond availability of vehicles in the area many minority populations are excluded from CSO's due to the requirements of membership. These rules generally include the individual having a driver's license with a clean driving record, a credit card, and regular access to the internet. Non-profit CSO's have been developed to serve low-income neighborhoods. These CSO's generally treat carshare as an extension of the existing transit system. Most of these car shares also offer reduced membership and rental fees to low-income individuals.
Case Studies[edit | edit source]
BlueLA[edit | edit source]
In 2015 the Las Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) was awarded a grant through the California Air Resources Board through California Climate Investments (CCI) to pilot car sharing of electric vehicles in low-income neighborhoods of Los Angeles.[1] Following a one year case study from April 2017 to April 2018 the BlueLA pilot had 80 fully electric vehicles, 130 charging points, 26 charging stations, 2000 members and over 12000 trips.[2]
Zipcar (NYC) Equity Study[edit | edit source]
Stephanie Shellooe, a Columbia University Masters student, completed a case study analyzing the equitability of for-profit car share companies, particularly Zipcar's New York City operations. She found that car share vehicles where located in high income, well educated, white areas. The study states that this was done due to the amount of disposable income available to areas such as these. The thesis explains the advantages of the for-profit companies becoming more equitable in that the underserved populations are generally less likely to be car owners and thus have a higher need for a service allowing them to access a vehicle. [3]
[edit | edit source]
Vancouver, Canada has had a rich history of car sharing starting in 1996 the Cooperative Car Network was formed and became the cities first car share company. Over the years many companies entered the Vancouver car share market producing the four companies in the market today. Two of these companies , Evo and Car2Go, provide one-way car sharing while the other two, Modo and Zipcar, provide two-way car sharing services. The City of Vancouver supported Car Sharing by providing policies and incentives that benefited it. These included providing on-street parking permits to the car share vehicles as well as incentivizing new developments to be car share friendly.[4]
“Players in the Field”[edit | edit source]
- Traditional Car Shares
- Peer-to-peer Car Shares
- City Run
- BlueLA [8]
- Defunct Players
- Streetcar (Acquired by Zipcar in 2010)
- City CarShare (Ceased Operations in Favor of Getaround in 2016)
- Car2Go (Merged with DriveNow to form ShareNow) (Pulled from US Market in 2019)
- Maven (Pulled from Market in 2020)
See Also[edit | edit source]
External References[edit | edit source]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ “About BlueLA.” BlueLA, 11 Mar. 2020, www.bluela.com/about-bluela.
- ↑ “Electric and Equitable Learning from the BlueLA Carsharing Pilot.” Sharedusemobilitycenter.org, Shared-Use Mobility Center, 2019, learn.sharedusemobilitycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/NewFile_SUMC_04.15.19.pdf.
- ↑ Shellooe, Stephanie (May 2013). “Wheels When Who Wants Them: Assessing Social Equity and Access Implications of Carsharing in NYC”. Accessed September 16, 2020.
- ↑ Shaw, Mithcell (Fall 2018). “Twenty Years of Car Sharing: A case study on the City of Vancouver’s role in the growth of car sharing in Vancouver”. Accessed September 16, 2020.