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CARSHARING/
NORTH AMERICA
source: www.carsharing.net/where.html
www.communauto.com/abonnes/
SperlingShaheenW.html
www.carsharing.net/library/
PRR-2004-23_print.pdf
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Owning a car in a big city can be a major hassle. Which is why car-sharing services are taking off as a cheap, easy alternative… - Canada was the first North American country to begin carsharing. Until the late ‘90s, almost all North American carsharing companies followed the operational model of most European CSOs: private individuals acquire cars from nearby neighbourhood lots and return them to the same lot. None of these CSOs used smart technologies (i.e., smart cards, Internet-based reservations, and vehicle tracking) to facilitate reservations, operations, and key management. In total, as of 1999, 9 CSOs had about 1,600 members and operated about 115 vehicles. Four of them were run as for-profit businesses, and the rest were run as non-profit cooperatives;
- afterwards, the phenomenon exploded. At the end of 2004, in the United States, 15 carsharing programs claimed 61,651 members sharing 939 vehicles, and in Canada 11 carsharing programs claimed 10,759 members sharing 528 vehicles. In addition, as of December 2004, two US station car programs claimed approximately 130 members and 106 vehicles; (1)
- well-organised independent carsharing organisations exist in major Canadian cities. The oldest, Auto-Com in Quebec City, began operations in August 1994 and had 450 members and 34 cars in 1999. This organisation began as a non-profit cooperative, but changed to a for-profit business in 1997. In September 1995, it launched a second for-profit CSO in Montreal, CommunAuto, which had 550 members and 32 cars by 1999;
- AutoShare in Toronto has operated since 1998 and now has over 1,000 people sharing motor vehicles. Vancouver’s Cooperative Auto Network (CAN) is a not-for-profit cooperative venture with 77 vehicles. It is currently launching a pilot project (TransLink) in conjunction with the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority. VrtuCAR in Ottawa celebrated its third anniversary of operation in June 2003;
- strong interest in carsharing is emerging in a number of US cities. Portland, Oregon was the pioneer starting carsharing early 1998 showing constant growth based on the for-profit company ‘Car Sharing Portland’. In Seattle, the city and surrounding King County offered funding (approximately US$600,000 for three years) to launch a for-profit private venture marketed as ‘Flexcar’ run by Mobility Inc. Starting in January 2000, Flexcar already had a 170 users within the first 3 weeks of operation;
- Zipcar and Flexcar, the biggest car-share companies in the United States, are expanding into multiple cities and making money in the process. They are vying to dominate the US$15 million US car-share business, which ABI Research says could grow more than 10-fold by 2009; (2)
- launched in 2000 in Boston, Zipcar operates in 7 states and 21 cities, mainly along the East Coast (including metro Boston, New York, and Washington, DC). The firm has realised a 100% increase in members in 2004, with revenues projected to increase again by more than 100% in 2005. With approximately 30,000 members signed since inception, Zipcar has the largest active membership base of any US carsharing service. On average, 1,500 new customers join Zipcar's service each month. Recent growth has been fuelled by several new partnerships with major universities and corporations, frequent driver pricing plans, record business- to-business sales; (3)
- rival Flexcar has moved its 350-car fleet into Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and Washington, where it's going head-to-head with Zipcar for the first time. With backing from Honda (HMC), it expected to hit profitability by early 2005. The company boasts more than 20,000 members and is seeing the most growth among corporate customers looking to save money on rentals and taxis; (2)
- City CarShare San Francisco was started by a group of transportation activists and urban planners in March 2001. By the end of its first year in operation, City CarShare had grown to more than 1,500 members and 70 vehicles. Other seriously planned carsharing operations starting in year 2000 are at the Presidio National Park in San Francisco (Ford TH!NK), in Washington DC (DC Car Share), and in Boston (ZipCar);
- Philadelphia is the first city in the United States to institute a governmental car-share program. The city is partnering with PhillyCarShare - a local vehicle-sharing provider - to provide transportation to those employees who do not have personal means by which to travel. Under the Fleet Reduction Project, the Street administration hopes to eliminate 400 vehicles, freeing thousands of dollars to supplement parking, auto parts and maintenance of the others. With 17 Center City and University City services, PhillyCarShare hopes to allow multiple city employees to travel simultaneously, thereby cutting travel costs and promoting transportation efficiency and structure in a government that is facing major cuts these years. (4)
Funded efforts to launch carsharing programs in the United States have their roots in ‘station cars’…- these are vehicles deployed at passenger rail stations in metropolitan areas and made available to rail commuters. They were initiated by rail transit operators seeking to relieve parking shortages at stations (and desiring to avoid the high cost of building more parking infrastructure), by electric utilities eyeing a potential initial market for battery-powered electric vehicles, and by air quality regulators seeking to reduce vehicle usage and pollution. Most of these programs have struggled with the high cost and low reliability of first-generation electric cars;
- in the San Francisco area, Hertz in collaboration with BART, the regional rail transit operator, began a limited program at a rail station in Fremont with 20-40 vehicles in early 2000. Hertz will take control of 21 existing parking spaces and will use the space more intensively by parking cars bumper-to-bumper and dispatching the vehicles to reverse-commute subscribers. Hertz plans to charge ‘home end users’ and the ‘corporate work site users’ US$400 per month, which includes guaranteed parking near the station entrance, cleaning, servicing and maintenance, and refuelling for up to 1,000 miles per month;
- two ‘smart’ carsharing research demonstrations launched in 1999 in California provide more evidence of emerging interests and plans in the US. The CarLink project in northern California was initiated with 12 compressed natural gas Honda Civics and a variety of state-of-the-art advanced communication and reservation technologies, under the direction of the University of California, Davis; Intellishare in southern California incorporates 15 Honda EV Plus electric vehicles, smart cards, and on-board computer technologies, under the direction of researchers at University of California, Riverside.
(1) Based on data provided by Susan Shaheen, University of California, Berkeley, December 2004.
(2) Matt Palmquist, “Car-Sharing Moves Into the Fast Lane”, November 17, 2004.
[ www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,781083,00.html]
(3) [ vancouver.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=bc_auto-co-op20050610]
(4) Sameer Khetan, “City joins car-sharing program to reduce fleet”, The Daily Pennsylvanian April 6, 2004.
[ www.dailypennsylvanian.com/vnews/display.v/ART/407266da000df]
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