Are You Willing to Carshare?

In a recent article on public transportation, Miranda Newsom commented that carshare programs are an excellent transportation option for environmentally conscious and money wise urbanites. Here, we follow up on the carshare option. So, the question becomes…

Toyota Prius Tuesdays and Ford Escape Hybrid Fridays?

What if you could drive a different car each day of the week? Carshare programs make this possible and often even beat the price of owning a car. Carshare members can experience both the freedom of living without a car, which increases interest in public transportation, and the freedom of having a car.

The outcome is more public transportation friendly cities, less congestion, and less auto exhaust pollution. But just who would want to participate in such a program? What are the advantages and what are the drawbacks?

• » See also: #3 Portland, Oregon (USA): Great Bicycle City Photo Tour
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First, what is a carshare exactly?

Carshare programs are essentially clubs that give members access to a citywide fleet of cars. With roots in Switzerland, carshare programs can now be found in over 600 cities around the world.

Carshare programs are growing in North America as well. As with many good things, like… um… poutine , carsharing was introduced to the Americas through Quebec. Since it’s debut in the early ’90s, carsharing has caught on like wildfire in many cities across North America. In San Francisco, for example, it’s easy to spot cars from one of the city’s three carshare companies all over the city.

Advantages?

For many people, carshare programs are a convenient way to test the waters of not owning a car. They alleviate the costs of buying and maintaining a car as well as other costs, like insurance and parking fees. They also allow for the sense of freedom that many people cite as their primary reason for owning a car, providing access to any model of car in your program’s fleet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The benefits of carsharing are greatest for people who live in places where public transportation is good and there are disadvantages to owning a car, like parking constraints, high traffic, and congestion charging. Here’s a case study in of the environmental and community benefits of a carshare program in San Francisco, which has chronically limited parking and a famously good public transportation infrastructure:

• Since joining, 30% of CarShare member households have sold one or more of their privately owned cars, compared to 8% in a control group of nonmembers.

• Overall per-capita automobile travel among City CarShare members has dropped 47%, while travel among nonmembers increased 73% over the same period.

• City CarShare is saving 13,000 miles of vehicle travel, 720 gallons of gasoline, and 20,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions each day in the Bay Area.

• In the City of San Francisco, 84% of the cases surveyed indicate that car sharing was less costly than renting cars or taking taxis.

Disadvantages?

While carshare programs offer urbanites a chic edge over owning a car in the city, still they’re not for everyone. If you’re a bicycle commuter or if public transportation serves all of your needs, then carsharing is just one more way two buy into something that has little value to you: cars.

Carshare programs also face hurdles in less densely populated areas, such as the ubiquitous suburban landscape of North America. On the other side of the world, Asia might also be hard to win over to the idea of carsharing since car ownership is being touted in many Asian countries as the status symbol du jour.

Lasting trend or passing fancy?

Even Ford Motors CEO and grandson of Henry Ford, William Ford Jr., sees carsharing and public transportation as the way of the future. As he famously said, “the day will come when the notion of car ownership becomes antiquated. If you live in a city, you don’t need to own a car.”

With over half of the world’s population now living in urban areas, and carshares gaining steadily in popularity, this day might be coming soon.

Resources:

Gas2.0, the GO site specializing in all things car-related | Green Options

Carshare Guide, an overview of carsharing with detailed benefits | The Transportation and Land Use Coalition

Where can you find a Car Sharing? | CarSharing.net

The Carsharing handbook | Rainmagazine

Bringing Carsharing to Your Community (be warned, this can be a big task) | City Carshare [PDF document]

Transit 511, #1 public transportation resource for the San Francisco Bay Area, as noted in the article | 511.org

Photo: Flickr

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