Carsharing and Partnership Management an International Perspective

118 Paper No. 99-0826 TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH RECORD 1666 Carsharing and Partnership Management An International Perspective SUSAN SHAHEEN, DANIEL SPERLING, AND CONRAD WAGNER Most cars carry one person and are used for less than 1 hour per day. A tied to actual vehicle usage. A carsharing system in effect transforms more economically rational approach would be to use vehicles more the fixed costs of vehicle ownership into variable costs. intensively. Carsharing, in which a group of people pays a subscription Carsharing is most effective and attractive when seen as a trans- plus a per-use fee, is one means of doing so. Carsharing may be orga- portation mode that fills the gap between transit and private cars and nized through affinity groups, large employers, transit operators, neighborhood groups, or large carsharing businesses. Relative to car owner- that can be linked to other modes and transportation services. For ship, carsharing has the disadvantage of less convenient vehicle access long distances, one may use a household vehicle, air transport, rail, but the advantages of a large range of vehicles, fewer ownership respon- bus, or a rental car; and for short distances, one might walk, bicycle, sibilities, and less cost (if vehicles are not used intensively). The uncou- or use a taxi. But for intermediate travel activities, even routine ones, pling of car ownership and use offers the potential for altering vehicle one might use a shared vehicle. The shared-car option provides other usage and directing individuals toward other mobility options. The per- customer attractions: it can serve as mobility insurance in emergen- ceived convenience (e.g., preferred parking) and cost savings of car- cies and as a means of satisfying occasional vehicle needs and sharing have promoted a new modal split for many carsharing participants throughout the world. Societal benefits include the direct benefit desires such as carrying goods, pleasure driving in a sports car, or of less demand for parking space and the indirect benefits arising from taking the family on a trip. linking costs to actual usage and matching vehicles to trip purpose. The Over the last decade, carsharing has become more common, espe- experience of carsharing in Europe, North America, and Asia is cially in Europe and North America. Mostly it involves the shared reviewed, and its future prospects through expanded services, partner- usage of a few vehicles by a group of individuals. Vehicles typically ship management, and advanced technologies are explored. are deployed in a lot located in a neighborhood, a worksite, or at a transit station. A majority of existing carsharing programs and busi- The vast majority of automobile trips in U.S. metropolitan regions nesses still manage their services and operations manually. Users are drive-alone car trips. In 1990, approximately 90 percent of work place a vehicle reservation in advance with a human operator; obtain trips and 58 percent of nonwork trips in the United States were made their vehicle key through a self-service, manually controlled key by vehicles with only one occupant (1). Vehicles are unused an aver- box; and record their own mileage and usage data on forms that are age of 23 hours per day. This form of transportation is expensive and stored in the vehicles, key box, or both. As carsharing programs consumes large amounts of land. expand beyond 100 vehicles, manually operated systems become Private vehicles are attractive. Their universal appeal is demon- expensive and inconvenient, subject to mistakes in reservations, strated by rapid motorization rates, even in countries with high fuel access, and billing, and vulnerable to vandalism and theft. prices, good transit systems, and relatively compact land develop- Automated reservations, key management, and billing constitute ment. But the environmental, resource, and social costs of wide- one response to these problems. The larger European carsharing orga- spread car use are high. One strategy for retaining the benefits of car nizations (CSOs), especially in Germany and Switzerland, have use while limiting costs is to create institutions for sharing vehicles. begun to deploy a suite of automatic technologies that facilitate the The principle of carsharing is simple: individuals gain the bene- operation and management of services, offer greater convenience and fits of private cars without the costs and responsibilities of owner- flexibility for users, and provide additional security for vehicles and ship. Instead of owning one or more vehicles, a household accesses key management systems. In northern California, a “smart” carshar- a fleet of vehicles on an as-needed basis. Carsharing may be thought ing demonstration program called CarLink, with 12 compressed nat- of as organized short-term car rental. Individuals gain access to ural gas Honda Civics, began testing and evaluating a variety of state- of-the-art advanced communication and reservation technologies in vehicles by joining organizations that maintain a fleet of cars and January 1998 (2). A second, smart field test was launched in March light trucks in a network of vehicle locations. Generally, participants 1999 in southern California; known as Intellishare, it had 15 Honda pay a usage fee each time they use a vehicle. EV Plus electric vehicles, smartcards, and on-board computer tech- Carsharing provides the potential to reduce the costs of vehicle nologies. The shared vehicles are available for day use by faculty, travel for the individual as well as society. When a person owns a staff, and students at the University of California, Riverside campus. car, much of the cost of owning and operating the vehicle is fixed. Smart carsharing makes intermodalism more viable, thereby cre- The variable cost of using the owned vehicle is relatively low, and ating the potential for even greater benefits. For example, on return- thus the driver has an incentive to drive more than is economically ing from work at the end of a day, a traveler rents a shared-use vehi- rational. In contrast, payments by carsharing participants are closely cle at a transit station (or other rental site) close to home. She drives the car home and, should she wish, to other activity locations during the evening and then drives it back to the station in the morn- S. Shaheen and D. Sperling, Institute of Transportation Studies, University ing. After riding the train for the line-haul part of her trip that morning, of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616. C. Wagner, New Mobility Systems and Carsharing Services, West Start–CALSTART, 2701 she rents another vehicle to get to work from the train station. Dur- Monarch Street, Suite 200, Alameda, CA 94501. ing the day, the vehicle is used as a fleet vehicle at her office. Alto- Shaheen et al. Paper No. 99-0826 119 gether, a shared-use vehicle could be used for up to 10 distinct trips drop out of the organization and use traditional auto rentals to fulfill per day, and it could facilitate up to 4 additional transit trips. their occasional vehicle needs. 3. Finally, other members require vehicles so often for tripmak- ing that the effort to reserve shared-use cars becomes too great a bur- HISTORY OF CARSHARING IN EUROPE den. Often these individuals leave the CSO because they prefer ded- icated private vehicles to carsharing. Most carsharing efforts are still small scale and in Europe. One of the earliest European experiences with carsharing can be traced to For the first group of individuals, who move to the country, no an early cooperative, known as Sefage (Selbstfahrergemeinschaft), solution has been found. To regain their former clients and attract which initiated services in Zurich in 1948 (3). Membership in new ones, Stadtauto Drive has started some new initiatives (3). Sefage was motivated primarily by economics. It attracted individ- Both organizations are preparing to enter a modernization phase, uals who could not afford to purchase a car but found sharing one moving from manual “key box” operations to a system of smartcard appealing. Elsewhere, a series of “public car” experiments were technologies for making automatic and advanced reservations, attempted but had failed, including a carsharing initiative known as accessing vehicle keys, securing vehicles from theft, and facilitat- Procotip that was started in Montpellier, France, in 1971, and ing billing. The shift to smartcards simplifies vehicle access for cus- another, called Witkar, that was deployed in Amsterdam in 1973 (4). tomers and eases the administration and management of large sys- More recent and successful experiences with carsharing began in tems. However, the large investment required for the new Europe in the mid-1980s (5). Approximately 200 CSOs are active communication and reservation technologies puts pressure on these in 450 cities throughout Switzerland, Germany, Austria, the Nether- organizations to continue expanding to generate revenue to pay off lands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Italy. These carsharing these investments. countries collectively claim more than 100,000 participants. The A few smart shared-use vehicle tests already have been imple- European Car Sharing Association, established in 1991 to support mented in Europe. Lufthansa Airlines instituted automatic rental carsharing lobbying activities, reports a membership of 62 CSOs systems at the Munich and Frankfurt airports in 1993, in which a that collectively serve more than 60,000 individuals with 2,700 cars computer releases a key and starts the billing (9). After the car is at 850 locations (6). returned, the vehicle communicates distance traveled and fuel con- sumed to a central computer system. By the end of 1994, 12,000 Until a few years ago, virtually all CSO start-ups were subsidized employees at the two German airports had access to this “carpool” with public funding (with a few supported by corporate subsidies). system. Lufthansa reportedly has saved more than $20 million in Although many organizations received start-up grants, operational avoided parking infrastructure costs (9).

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