Program Announcement: World Carshare 2013 Policy/Strategies Program for Local Government

Carsharing has a brilliant, in many ways surprising and certainly very different future -- a future which is already well in process. Carsharing is one of the fastest growing new mobility modes, with until now almost all services occurring in the high income countries. But it is by and large new, unfamiliar and does not fit well with the more traditional planning and policy structures at the level of the city. This is a problem. And addressing this problem is the goal of this cycle of reports and events in the year ahead.

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World Carshare 2014: Policy/Strategies Program for Local Government

Carsharing has a brilliant, in many ways surprising and certainly very different future -- a future which is already well in process. Carsharing is one of the fastest growing new mobility modes, with until now almost all services occurring in the high income countries. But it is by and large new, unfamiliar and does not fit well with the more traditional planning and policy structures at the level of the city. This is a problem. And addressing this problem is the goal of this cycle of reports and events in the year ahead.

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July is World Carshare month on World Streets

July is World Carshare month on World Streets. What exactly does that mean and what might it mean for all of us here? In truth we have no clear idea at this point as to how this is going to play out, other than to use this great new medium that is World Streets in collaboration with the World Carshare Consortium which has been looking into this issues in a collaborative international expert forum since 1997. Let's see what happens when we put two good sustainability tools together.

Carsharing: the missing link in your city's sustainable transport system

The World Carshare Consortium is a free, cooperative, independent, international communications program supports carsharing projects and programs, worldwide. Since 1997 it offers a convenient place on the web to gather and share information and independent views on projects and approaches, past, present and planned future, freely and easily available to all comers. Today it serves as an information and exchange point for some 460 members coming if form more than thirty countries.

Why does the New Mobility Agenda support a concept that may to some appear to be so off-beat and marginal as carsharing? Simple! We think it's a great, sustainable, practical mobility idea whose time has come and whose potential impact is quite simply huge. Carsharing: the missing link in your city's sustainable transport system.

But carsharing is not yet a universal phenomenon as it should be. It is our firm belief that these is not one city, note one community even on this planet that should not be taking a careful look at carsharing. A better way to get around.

The following map showing people who came into the Consortium website this morning illustrates both the accomplishment and the challenge . . . we now have to get together to fill in all those empty white swaths. Let's see if we can now put World Streets and others to this great and worthy task.


July - Carsharing Month on World Streets

Our goal for the month is to see if we can encourage and publish at least two or three good articles each week over the month, and quite possibly if we are lucky one a day. After all the world has lots of carsharing in its future and if we can't help the world to understand that, well we are not doing our job.

Now we are counting on you to join in on this. So start to think about your contribution. Bear in mind that our readers come from many different places and while they are undeniably sharp when it comes to matters of sustainable transport, their knowledge of carsharing will often be a bit patchy.

Here are some of the kinds themes we would like to see addressed over the month.

• Outstanding public sector programs, research, etc. that are showing the way
• Cities that understand and are giving strong examples
• What can national programs, agencies do to support and speed the penetration of good carshare projects?
• Ideas for smaller community and even rural carsharing
• Carsharing in Global South cities
• What’s going on in Japan?
• How come no carsharing in China, India and South East Asia? (And when do we start?)
• The sociology of carsharing
• Who carshares?
• Carsharing on university and business campuses
• Combining carsharing and ride sharing
• iPhone et al one-click access to carshare use
• Does the future belong to Zip, Hertz, Avis, etc.?
• Coming carshare events where they can come and learn for themselves
• What about a list of outstanding carshare consultants available to work with you
• And update our World Carshare supplier list as well
• Outstanding reports and publications (critically presented of course).
• Bad News Department: I am sure you will have some candidates there
• Personal essay on experience with carsharing – learning, adaptation
• Videos

The idea is that after a month of total emersion (well almost) in a swirling sea of world carsharing, our readers are going to come away with a pretty sophisticated understanding of how this works and can work in their cities (and in their own lives)

So pitch in, do your bit, and reap the benefits of open teamwork.

Eric Britton, Editor

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World Streets Annual New Mobility Country Reviews: Carsharing: The last nail in the coffin of old mobility.

At the beginning of each new year the New Mobility Agenda invites the approximately two thousand individuals and groups from more than seventy nations on all continents who log into our dozen-plus focus sites to share overviews of the "state of the nation" in their particular area of interest and activity. This year we start with carsharing.

The following update note and invitation sent on Monday of this week to the almost five hundred members of the World Carshare Consortium, has set off the annual country updates on carsharing that will this year for the first time be published on World Streets. Over the course of the coming weeks, we shall be presenting their reports in these pages. You will see: 2009 was a great year for carsharing, and 2010 is going to be even better.

Carsharing: the last nail in the coffin of old mobility.

Contents:

1. Progress report - 2009
2. Countries and cities consulting WCS in 2009
3. The carshare/city/national government interface - Joint projects?
4. Carsharing and World Streets:
5. It's your forum – Do your bit
6. PS. Two questions for your attention
7. Annex: Countries and Cities consulting World Carshare in the last days
8. Want more on carsharing around the world?

1. 2009 State of World Carshare - Progress report:

2009 was the eleventh consecutive year of the World Carshare Consortium. Hurrah for continuity in a start and stop world.

Though I was somewhat disappointed to find that World Carshare was not nearly as lively and useful to you all in this last year as one might have hoped. I trust we shall be able to do better in 2010. In any event your can count on us to try.

We had received like 350 messages to the group over the year, one a day on averages, and have been host to close to 500 members, including a good number of the people who know more about how to make a carshare operation work than anyone on the planet. But it was precious hard to get anything out of most of you – which I guess is not altogether a bad sign, since I take it to mean that you were too busy running your operations to ask or deal with the more general, often strategic questions that are close at least to my heart and vision of things.

There is in fact more consultation than communication in our group, with close to ten thousand people checking in over the year, Here for example is a map showing the contacts over the last several days. The basic pattern is one we have seen here over the years, but there is some indication of spread of interest beyond the now traditional OECD region.



2. The carshare/city/national government interface - Joint projects?

The years pass but this is still in my view the weak link – the great unasked questions of carsharing. Our better and best carshare operators have now gleaned enough experience, have enough good examples to be able to plan, operate and of maintain viable accounts. That's no longer the question.

The following chart taken from Adam Millard-Ball's TRB report "Carsharing: Where and How It Succeeds" is worth taking out for a spin with since it reminds us of some of the apsects of this complex interface.



The big deal though is that even after a decade of carsharing that works most of our cities still fail to understand how carsharing fits into the larger whole of the sustainable transport strategy. We need more work, better references, clearer guidelines and examples of best practices to stimulate wider public policies in this area. I very much hope that we will find a way at least to follow and possibly to contribute to this in the year ahead.

I personally am interested in team or personal advisory and consulting assignments with both carshare operators and the respective public sector originations and agencies, both at the city and the national level. So if you have an idea or a project we might discuss , don't be shy, get in touch. And if I am not the person best suited to do the job, ask and I can make my best recommendations.

3. Carsharing and World Streets:

We started World Streets over this last year with the idea in mind that it would serve as a place to share with a much broader range of readers some of what is going on at the leading edge and most important for the success and contribution of carsharing, and of course the other areas that together constitute the New Mobility Agenda. if you click to http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/search/label/carshare you will see that we were able to post more than twenty I think rather interesting articles treating carshare developments in a number of countries as well as worldwide.

But to do a better job in 2010 we need more contributions, a bit more liveliness on the part of our members here (ahem!). It is not of course useful simply to publish a feature article around one more plain vanilla carshare operation, or some announcements of great stuff to follow. But our readers do want to hear about the innovations, the new ideas, the new cities, the problems, the barriers, and the outstanding examples that other cites, countries and operators can give some thought to. I hope we shall hear from you on this in the year ahead. After all, it is a collaborative program.

4. Support World Carshare and World Streets - 2010:

You may be aware that since World Carshare first cranked up in 1998, it has been totally financed by the person who is signing this letter. With from time to time a little help from our friends.

A handful of you have been kind enough to make contributions to World Streets to keep all this work going over 2009, ranging from $50 to $500. 2010 is going to be the year in which we either get the support on the scale we need, from public and private sector, or we will simply be unable to continue to serve you. So kindly take a bit of time as this new year starts up to give a careful read to the attached

Here in closing are four things I would like to ask you to have a look at before making up you mind on this.

1. Our four page/four minute summary which you can click to here - http://tinyurl.com/ws-4-4sum
2. A synopsis of 101 comments that we have received from expert readers worldwide, at http://tinyurl.com/ws-101
3. Our outline work program for 2010 – at http://tinyurl.com/ws-2010b
4. And finally, our background note for supporters and contributors – at http://tinyurl.com/ws-support2

That's it carsharers. I really hope you have taken the time to read this, and that you will at the very least let me have your reactions. It's great to put our shoulders behind a good idea like carsharing, but better yet when we have someone to help push.

Eric Britton
Editor

PS. Two concrete, I think rather important questions for your attention in closing:

a. Street safety for others: Is carsharing less dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists than own-car driving – in terms of deaths, injuries and accidents? - Please share with us your numbers and reports on this.

b. Accidents: Do carshare drivers have fewer accidents than own-car drivers?

If we know these two things for sure we know something very important and very useful.


Annex: Countries and Cities consulting World Carshare

Here's a list of the countries that have checked in over the last two months to our home page at www.worldcarshare.com. They are listed here in the order of the number of contacts over the period. Pretty much what one might expect, though one might take note of Qatar and the Emirates. In any event, we can see from it that things are not standing altogether still. (I have bolded those countries where memory serves me currently have operating carshare services. If I have this wrong in any way I count on you of set me right.)

1. United States
2. Canada
3. Qatar
4. United Kingdom
5. France
6. Germany
7. Spain
8. Australia
9. Japan
10. Switzerland
11. Ireland
12. Poland
13. India
14. United Arab Emirates
15. Czech Republic
16. Portugal
17. Luxembourg
18. Sweden
19. Austria
20. China
21. Argentina
22. Israel
23. Brazil
24. Belgium
25. Italy
26. Bahrain
27. Chile
28. Europe
29. South Africa
30. Russian Federation
31. Korea, Republic Of
32. Finland
33. Netherlands
34. Turkey
35. Malaysia
36. Romania
37. Greece
38. Denmark
39. New Zealand
40. Morocco
41. Egypt

Annex B. Consulting cities:

The list of cities checking in is no less fascinating. Here you have the latest in order of number of consultations, from high (Doha in Qatar??? ) to low. Again what fascinates me is to think about those cities that do not yet have carsharing but are apparently giving thought to it. Looks like 2010 is gong to be a very big year for carsharing.

2. Doha
3. Montreal
4. Paris
5. London
6. Madrid
7. Chicago
8. Englishtown
9. Aberdeen
10. Sydney
11. Zürich
12. Dublin
13. Dubai
14. Madras
15. Miami
16. Hamburg
17. Calgary
18. Szczecin
19. Vancouver
20. Quebec
21. Leesburg
22. Burlington
23. Westminster
24. Winnipeg
25. Rottweil
26. Beijing
27. Buenos Aires
28. Rochester
29. Toronto
30. New York
31. Stockholm
32. Moscow
33. Springfield
34. Louth
35. Albany
36. Cambridge
37. Durham
38. Bexley
39. Saint-Leu-La-Forêt
40. Graz
41. Lisboa
42. Eugene
43. Brockville
44. Dortmund
45. Santiago
46. Asan
47. Ostrava
48. Zaragoza
49. Prague
50. Hyderabad
51. Yehud
52. Uetersen
53. Osaka
54. Fortuna
55. Istanbul
56. Boulder
57. Brooklyn
58. San Pablo
59. São Paulo
60. Barnsley
61. Sheboygan
62. North Vancouver
63. Brussels
64. Bloomington
65. Oviedo
66. Turin
67. Bremen
68. Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux
69. Salem
70. Helsinki
71. Kingston
72. Berlin
73. Johannesburg
74. Warsaw
75. Ubobo
76. Melbourne
77. Barcelona
78. Littleton
79. Darmstadt
80. Ashburn
81. Coimbra
82. Choszczno
83. Richmond
84. Saint Petersburg
85. Poznan
86. Nogent-sur-marne
87. Cape Town
88. Birmensdorf
89. Entroncamento
90. Rutledge
91. Frankfurt Am Main
92. Yarramalong
93. Cannes
94. Reading
95. Bucharest
96. Colorado Springs
97. Leipzig
98. Lansing
99. Beaumont
100. Vienna
101. San Jose
102. Guyancourt
103. Ipswich
104. Porsel
105. Savyon
106. Iráklion
107. Atlanta
108. Venice
109. Victoriaville
110. Beverly Hills
111. Pincourt
112. Cairo
113. Lisbon
114. Albuquerque
115. Athens
116. Mountain View
117. Sheffield
118. Lausanne
119. Dudley
120. Sugar Land
121. Beenleigh
122. Canberra
123. Hägersten
124. Kuala Lumpur
125. Rennes
126. Lévis
127. Saint-jérôme
128. Las Vegas
129. Ossining
130. Trévoux
131. Kirkland
132. Saint-Germain-En-Laye
133. Ålborg
134. Victoria
135. Perth
136. Kanata
137. Stamford
138. Marbella
139. Waiblingen
140. Strasbourg
141. Hutto
142. Halifax
143. Gladwyne
144. Lincent
145. Davidson
146. Ahmadabad
147. Saint-hubert
148. Austin
149. Archamps
150. Cary
151. Ketchum
152. Auckland
153. Munich
154. Meudon
155. Los Angeles
156. Glenview Nas
157. Den Haag
158. Aachen
159. Stuttgart
160. Roselle
161. Rio De Janeiro
162. Buffalo
163. Lubin
164. Oakland
165. Göteborg
166. Denver
167. Casablanca
168. Tel Aviv
169. Amsterdam
170. Crofton
171. Le Mans
172. San Antonio
173. Boston
174. Tarpon Springs
175. Valbonne

What lessons in this other than that at least the curiosity is wide spread? (Though we also know that many of these cities already have carshare operations working on their streets.)

# # #

Want more on carsharing around the world?

No problem. Get comfortable, pour yourself a cup of coffee and take a bit of time to investigate . . .

1. All World Streets articles on carsharing – http://tinyurl.com/ws-carsharing

2. The World Carshare Consortium at http://www.worldcarshare.com

3. Search World Carshare's member forum - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WorldCarShare/messages (You have to be a member of the forum to make this work, but that's no problem. Just send a quick email to the editor here – editor@worldstreets.org and it will be done.)

4. Finally check out our rather huge, tightly focused New Mobility Knowledge Base (http://www.Knoogle.net on carsharing world-wide at http://tinyurl.com/kn-carshare. (Careful here: this will call up more than 500 references so you may want to think about narrowing your search to a country, city, supplier, whatever. For that drop to the bottom of the page and try "Search within results". You'll see.)

As you will quickly see this is an existing, fast-developing and thoroughly practical transportation innovation that is ready to go. It is a key component of the path to sustainable transport, sustainable cities and sustainable lives.

We can do it.

The Editor

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World Streets Annual New Mobility Country Reviews: A 2010 update on carsharing in the United States

If not such a great moment for the US car industry, 2009 was quite a year for carsharing in the States! Dave Brooks of www.Carsharing.us out of Portland Oregon reports for World Streets on carshare developments in the United States over 2009, with some reflections on where things might be heading in the year ahead.

# # #

Best wishes to World Streets readers for 2010.

Here are some thoughts about the past year on carsharing in the US (sometime dropping back a little further into late 2008). The big news is that car sharing in North America turned 15 this year, thanks in no small part to Communauto - a silent leader of the industry.

The big news in my mind was the launch of car2go in Austin. It's a very gutsy move on Daimler's move to launch in an archetypal US city . As I have said on www.carsharing.us, I don't believe that car2go is necessarily targeting the classic market, so it has the potential to be the game changer that American urban transportation needs.

I haven't (yet) written about it (since I'm directly involved with it), but another start up that announced itself in 2009 promising to unveil another operating scheme - RelayRides - the first peer to peer (or person to person) carsharing service. It will enable private car owners to make their vehicles available for carsharing for a day or more at a time with the possibility to earn a substantial chunk of money each year. Of course, the operational challenges are significant since you now have to manage both the member/driver and vehicle owner sides of the equation.

There continued to be a strong growth in membership in existing carsharing cities.  My guess is that most companies also experienced a growth in revenues and profitability, especially Zipcar (since they haven't added any new major cities or expansion in overall fleet size (compared to where they were at the time of the Flexcar merger). I would be amazed if any carshare didn't experience an increase in vehicle utilization (hours per day) helping out the bottom line.

What expansion that occurred was primarily in college and university carsharing services - which can be a very good deal for the carsharing companies since they usually involve a contractual arrangement with guaranteed revenues and handling of some (most) of the fleet management to the university. As has been pointed out elsewhere if you look at the budgets of higher education, they really seem to "get" the issues of transportation and are willing to do spend some money on it.

Meanwhile cities with revitalizing downtowns seemed to realizing that carsharing offered something of benefit and several RFPs ("request for proposals" - tenders to the rest of the world) hit the street - Miami Beach, Baltimore and Pasadena, to name a few. Meanwhile, in the LA basin, which once had more than 200 Flexcars, are edging toward putting out some incentives to attract carsharing - Long Beach, Santa Monica, Los Angeles city proper - as part of more comprehensive strategy to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals set by the State of California.

Partnerships — carsharing companies made some headway in 2009: I-Go Carsharing in Chicago announced a major partnership with the Chicago Transit Authority, ace-ing out Zipcar, for the Chicago Card Plus - a stored value card for transit travel and an RFID card for carsharing. Earlier, I-Go signed another partnership with the Parks District

Developments — Kevin McLaughlin reminds me that, "In Toronto, the city is finally realizing that it's all about parking. Both AutoShare and Zipcar HAVE BEEN TAKING advantage of the development offsets being granted to new condo builders if they provide carsharing parking in their buildings (often as high as 10 few spaces per shared car, in the range of $200,000 cost savings!)" Toronto recently approved its first large condo (300 units) with NO PARKING for residents, and 9 shared vehicle onsite."

The City of Winnepeg also provided a developer an alternative to meeting parking requirements by setting up an in-house carsharing service (since no commercial company operates in Winnepeg at the present time; Hertz, Enterprise are you listening?) http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/business/City-drives-hard-condo-bargain-44292562.html

On street parking continues to a conundrum for many cities. For some reason most continue not to "get it"! They're happy to provide parking for taxi cabs, which are operated by private companies but somehow providing carsharing is controversial, even though the benefits to the city (of having cab stands) are much better documented and flow to the residents not (primarily) to visitors.

Technology

On the technology front, the big news was the major investment in French carsharing technology company Eileo by Hertz. Another major development is the joint marketing agreement between Convadis (Swiss car computer maker) and Metavera (Toronto-based carsharing reservation system provider). It was a natural link up since Convadis faced limitations selling their product since they didn't have an integrated reservation system and Metavera was looking for a more fully-featured option to supplement their long-term link up with OpenCar Networks, used by most all of the independent carshares in North America.

Apps — Zipcar continued its focus on the flash with the industry's biggest marketing coup of all time, scoring inclusion on stage at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference to showcase its iPhone app (replacing the interesting but limited Where app). While scoring headlines and TV segments, as happens with technology, the actual rollout was delayed for months over a seemingly trivial hardware glitch - making sure all the Zipcar's could honk their horns with a tap of the button on the iPhone screen. But the independents were on the wave, as well, and Metavera, which provides reservations and support to most of them, unveiled its a mobile reservation site to work with iPhone, Blackberries, etc., while continuing to improve its web carsharing system with functionality that keeps up with Zip.

Battery electric vehicles edged closer to becoming a viable alternatives to gasoline/diesel with Nissan unveiling the Leaf EV; Daimler, after a year to testing their Smart ED (electric drive) in the UK, announcing the start of manufacture; BMW demonstrating the EV concept in a Mini, with a host of other companies threatening to manufacture - Th!nk, . The most interesting is Electrovaya, which opened what they called "carsharing" in Baltimore with a service called Altcar.com. By the year's end all the vehicles were all located at one location downtown, the Maryland Science Center.

Better Place, Shai Aggasi's much promoted and heavily invested EV battery service, which has always indicated it wasn't interested in carsharing, cleverly signed a deal in Denmark for the railroad system (DSB) to operate Better Place vehicles in a public carsharing service at several train stations in Copenhagen and elsewhere. Finally, the City of Paris continued to move closer to their Autolib, EV carsharing system, taking time out in 2009 to get the surrounding cities to participate in the program as well. Similar to car2go, Autolib would offer one way carsharing between stations.

Meanwhile, given the US fascination for plug-in hybrids, in 2009 Zipcar followed HourCar (including a solar recharger station) and Autoshare into the Plug In Hybrid world with a single vehicle on their system in San Francisco.

Some comments about specific companies during 2009:

Hertz Connect continued to grow their fleet in Manhattan up to over 400 by the end of the year - certainly attracting members that have been frustrated with Zipcar's on-going customer service problems there. Near the end of the year Hertz surprised everyone with announcements of major new international operations in Madrid and Berlin. Fleet sizes in existing cities are up slightly Paris now with 77 and London at 115. Hertz did send a message to Zipcar by listing 4 cars in Boston and further challenged them with token vehicles in Chicago and San Francisco.

U-Carshare (U-Haul) went live in Salt Lake City with 28 vehicles - concluding a protracted RFP process. The Salt Lake operation branched out from the traditional ad-covered PT Cruisers with a wide range of vehicles, including the requisite Mini Cooper, hybrid Civic and Ford Escape, Prius, as well as Toyota Yaris, Mazda 3, Ford Focus and several pickups and larger Ford vans, both passenger and cargo configurations. In other cities, such as Portland, Oregon, U-Carshare vehicle numbers are static and they continue to take a very passive approach to marketing - with no visible advertising other that on-street here and presence at a couple of public events.

WeCar (Enterprise) - continues to play its cards very close, with several university/college deals including University of South Florida in Tampa. Of course, Enterprise has the biggest challenge integrating carsharing into their existing business model of any car rental company since they already have extensive network of neighborhood rental locations, which, arguably would lose a little business from carsharing but would also likely funnel some longer-term rental business they would otherwise have missed

Independent carshares in North America continue to move forward - most continuing to grow at a more modest rate than previous years.

* Philly Carshare seems to be on the upswing after disastrous decision to terminate members and raise rates.

* Nonprofit Boulder Carshare signaled a change of strategy with it's new name EGo, expansion and upgrade of its fleet in Boulder and more significantly locating 2 vehicles in Denver. They continue to offer vehicles at the remarkably sensible prices of $4/hr. + 30¢ per mile.

Another nonprofit, * Austin Carshare, which has been struggling to figure out where the capital to grow would come from since its founding 3 years ago, sent out a letter in the fall to members that they were considering becoming a cooperative. Nothing decided yet - perhaps watching what happens to car2go.

* Chicago's I-Go Carsharing passed the 13,000 member mark announcing further expansion in targeted suburban pods including Oak Park, Evanston, Skokie, Forest Park, and most recently Des Plaines.

* Cooperative Auto Network in Vanccouver, BC, continues to provide excellent service and supports a number of smaller services in British Columbia with their Carshare Everywhere reservation system.

Meanwhile there's a host of smaller carshares all over the US and especially Canada - with 5, 10, 25 vehicles. And there's continued interest in startups for the second tier cities that the "big boys" don't seem to want to do into. (Portland would never have carsharing today if Zipcar and Flexcar were making the decisions.)

Zipcar - last but not least, the market leader probably crossed the line into overall profitability, amidst several mentions of an Initial Public Offering sometime in the not to distant future. They got to profitability by very carefully managing their business - continuing drive more usage (hours per day) on the existing fleet. What expansion they did was primarily in contracted deals with universities, which produce a good flow revenue. Near the end of the year they announced another overseas investment, in Avancar, Barcelona, Spain. The exact terms of the investment are a sketchy but it's going to give Avancar the ability to grow and there's certainly plenty of potential in Barcelona, as well as other cities in Spain. Laying the groundwork for this expansion was an analysis and press release claiming a world wide potential for carsharing at 37 million members and over 10 billion dollars in annual revenues.

Ikea — You might have missed it, but back in March, there was a minor flurry of speculation that multinational retail giant Ikea might be getting into the car business under the brand name of Lesko, around which they developed a stealth marketing campaign. Speculation ran from manufacturing a vehicle to operating a carsharing service. It turns out Lesko IS a carsharing service - but in the UK sense of the word - and what Ikea did was set up a "covoiture" ride board on their web site so people could hitch rides. How they would get all their stuff home is not explained. (If they'd waited just a little longer they could have bought Saab or Volvo!)



I'm sure I've overlooked some significant developments, so let me know what you think was important in 2009. I wish World Streets and its many readers worldwide the best for 2010.

# # #

Dave Brook is a pioneering figure in US carsharing and now works as a consultant in carsharing and new mobility services to start up companies and government agencies. He occasionally posts ideas about carsharing in North America and the world to his website www.Carsharing.us.

# # #

Want more on carsharing around the world?

No problem. Get comfortable, pour yourself a cup of coffee and take a bit of time to investigate . . .

1. All World Streets articles on carsharing – http://tinyurl.com/ws-carsharing

2. The World Carshare Consortium at http://www.worldcarshare.com

3. Search World Carshare's member forum - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WorldCarShare/messages (You have to be a member of the forum to make this work, but that's no problem. Just send a quick email to the editor here – editor@worldstreets.org and it will be done.)

4. Finally check out our rather huge, tightly focused New Mobility Knowledge Base (http://www.Knoogle.net on carsharing world-wide at http://tinyurl.com/kn-carshare. (Careful here: this will call up more than 500 references so you may want to think about narrowing your search to a country, city, supplier, whatever. For that drop to the bottom of the page and try "Search within results". You'll see.)

As you will quickly see this is an existing, fast-developing and thoroughly practical transportation innovation that is ready to go. It is a key component of the path to sustainable transport, sustainable cities and sustainable lives.

We can do it.

The Editor

--> Read on:

2009 North American Carsharing Update

This article is part of our series of updates on carsharing status, problems, projects and plans from members of the New Mobility Agenda's World Carshare program. Why so much attention to a mobility form that will never account for more than a percent or two of all trips in our cities? Simple. Carsharing is one of the vital keys to sustainable transport.

2009 North American Carsharing Update

Higher fuel costs, increased environmental awareness, and a slowing economy are supporting carsharing growth in North America. The principle of carsharing is simple: individuals and businesses/government fleets gain the benefit of vehicle access without the cost and responsibility of private vehicle ownership. Members access a fleet of vehicles for use on an as-needed basis, typically paying by hour and mileage.

The authors estimated that there were 650,000 carsharing members sharing approximately 20,000 vehicles worldwide as of October 2008. In recent years, carsharing in North America has expanded to be the largest market in the world. As of Fall 2008, the North American market accounted for approximately half of the worldwide carsharing membership and nearly 40% of the worldwide carsharing fleets deployed.

As of July 1, 2009, a total of 60 carsharing operations have been deployed in North America since 1994. Of these 60 carsharing operations, 42 are operational and 18 defunct. Reasons for closures include experimental programs, high insurance costs following 9/11, and cost and staffing considerations.

As of July 2009, there were 26 carsharing organizations in the U.S., with approximately 324,000 members sharing more than 7,700 vehicles. As of July 2009, there were 16 carsharing operators in Canada, with more than 53,000 members sharing approximately 2,000 vehicles.

In Canada, member-vehicle ratios have steadily risen over the past ten years, from 14:1 in 1998 to 26:1 in 2009. In contrast, the U.S. is one of three nations worldwide with substantially higher member-vehicle ratios. In July 2009, U.S. member-vehicle ratios were 42:1. Higher U.S. member-vehicle ratios have been a business strategy undertaken by many operators to increase vehicle usage and profitability, particularly among the largest for-profit and non-profit operators.

In North America, five major business models have emerged:

1) for-profit,
2) non-profit,
3) cooperative (owned by its members),
4) public transit (carsharing operated by a public transit agency), and
5) university research programs (operated by universities for research purposes).

In both the U.S. and Canada, for-profit operators continue to account for the majority of carsharing members and fleets deployed.

As of July 2009, 30.8% of the operators are for-profit (eight of 26), in the U.S.; accounting for an estimated 86% and 88% of members and vehicles, respectively. In Canada, 37.5% of the operators are for-profit (six of 16) and account for approximately 87% and 86% of the members and vehicles, respectively.

Commercial Mainstreaming of North American Carsharing

The October 2007 merger of Flexcar and Zipcar, which created the world’s largest multi-national operator, marked the beginning of carsharing’s commercial mainstreaming phase in North America. Since late-2007, North American carsharing has been marked by the following trends:

1) increasing availability and affordability of insurance,
2) market growth and diversification,
3) market entry and competition by traditional car rental services, and
4) continued public policy development.

In North America, the cost and availability of insurance has had a substantial impact on carsharing. Initially, insurance was either unavailable or cost prohibitive, particularly in the U.S.

As carsharing has mainstreamed, insurance has become increasingly available and affordable. This has coincided with market diversification and expansion into new markets, including government and corporate fleets, small business, and colleges/universities.

Three North American carsharing operators have entered municipal fleet contracts with the cities of Berkeley, CA; Philadelphia, PA; and Vancouver, BC. Market diversification has been more common in the U.S. with the expansion of carsharing services to over 150 North American college and university campuses, the majority in the U.S.

Another major trend has been the recent launch of carsharing services by traditional car rental companies, including Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s WeCar, Connect By Hertz, and U-Haul’s U Car Share.

As carsharing becomes increasingly more mainstream in North America, a number of policies are being considered. The majority of these policies are in the U.S. in locations with existing carsharing services that support large memberships; however, a few policies have been developed to encourage carsharing startups. Some of the carsharing policies include developer and zoning regulations, fleet reduction, participant subsidies, on-street and off-street parking, and taxation.

As carsharing continues to expand, both supportive and unsupportive policy approaches will continue to influence carsharing’s growth and locations in the U.S. and Canada.


Bibliography

Berkeley and City CarShare to Make History: First Shared Municipal Fleet in the U.S. Press Release, City of Berkeley, California, July 15, 2004. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/mayor/PR/pressrelease2004-0715.htm. Accessed July 28, 2008.

City to Join PhillyCarShare, Cut 400 Vehicles. City of Philadelphia, Press Release, April 12, 2004. http://www.phila.gov/pdfs/City_to_Join_PhillyCarShare.pdf. Accessed November 12, 2008.

Cohen, A., S. Shaheen, and R. McKenzie. Carsharing: A Guide For Local Planners. PAS
Memo, May/June 2008.

Millard-Ball, A., G. Murray, J. ter Schure, C. Fox, and J. Burkhardt. TCRP Report 108: Car-Sharing: Where and How It Succeeds. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2005.

Shaheen, S.A., A.P. Cohen. Growth in Worldwide Carsharing: An International Comparison. In Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 1992, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2007, pp 81-89.

Shaheen, S., A. Cohen, and M. Chung. American Carsharing: A Ten-Year Retrospective. In Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2009, forthcoming.

Shaheen, S. A., A. P. Cohen, and J. D. Roberts. Carsharing in North America: Market Growth, Current Developments, and Future Potential. In Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 1986, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2006, pp. 116–124.

Shaheen, S. and M. Meyn. Shared-Use Vehicle Services: A Survey of North American Market Developments. Proc., 9th World Congress on Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (CD-ROM). Chicago, Ill., Oct. 2002.

Shaheen, S. A., A. Schwartz, and K. Wipyewski. Policy Considerations for Carsharing and Station Cars: Monitoring Growth, Trends, and Overall Impacts. In Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 1887, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2004, pp. 128–136.

The authors:
Susan A. Shaheen is a Research Associate, Mineta Institute , &Co-Director, Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) University of California, Berkeley. She can be reached at sashaheen@tsrc.berkeley.edu


Adam P. Cohen is a Research Associate, Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC)
University of California, Berkeley. He can be reached at apcohen@cal.berkeley.edu.



New Mobility Agenda references:

* New Mobility Agenda at www.newmobility.org
* World Carshare Consortium at www.worldcarshare.com
* World Carshare Cafe (forum) at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WorldCarShare/

World Carshare Consortium: This free, cooperative, independent, international communications program supports carsharing projects and programs, world wide. Since 1997 it offers a convenient place on the web to gather and share information and independent views on projects and approaches, past, present and planned future, freely and easily available to all comers.

To put this report into its broader international context, the following map taken this morning from the World Carshare Consortium discussion forum pinpoints the last eighty message origins, and in the process provides some visual clues as to where the action is in the sector worldwide. Basically what we are seeing is that the number of contact points is steadily expanding as new countries and cities start to get involved in the forum discussions. A first step in a process which we have seen in many places lead to carsharing itself.

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Short report on carsharing in Amsterdam (From Going Dutch/Carshare Strategies project)

This is short report was submitted by the participants of the city of Amsterdam in the 20 February 2014 workshop in the Utrecht for the project Going Dutch: Carshare Strategies for Cities being carried out by the KpVV (think tank of the Dutch ministry of transport) in cooperation with EcoPlan.  The latest draft report on that meeting and the recommendations of those present from a cross-section of Dutch cities and agencies is available in our project library at http://goo.gl/clWKnD. Your comment and suggestions are most welcome.

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The Three Faces of Carsharing: France 2005

Here by way of historical background to accompany our just getting-underway World Carshare 2013 update please find some working notes that I pulled together for the purpose of a presentation at the first official government meeting on carsharing in France (seven years after we set up our own unofficial working group with the OECD in 1998). What you have here was extracted from a much longer thinkpiece that I was  drafting on the subject at the time. Have a look and let us know if you find some vision in what follows. Or the lack thereof if that is your read of the evidence as et out here and available from other sources.

 - - > Full report available here.

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World Carshare Consortium 2010 Operations Plan: Coming to a bend in the road

Since 1998 we have actively supported the development of carsharing projects and programs in cities and countries around the world. Over that time the concept of sharing a car has grown from a largely unknown transport option, to the extent where today there are more than one thousand cities in the world where you can find a shared car this morning. The main instrument of our collaboration has been something we called the World Carshare Consortium. But as you will see here are a few changes in store for the way in which we run this part of our sustainable transportation initiative.

Short introduction: The World Carshare Consortium which you can handily access at www.worldcarshare.org has been run on an open and free basis, much like World Streets, over all these years. However for reasons of hard economic realities we are now constrained to start to change that formula, which is the purpose of this posting. This may interest you, since it is relevant to how all of us can go about combining our knowledge, energies, and resources to advancing good sustainable transportation ideas. And good carsharing is certainly one of the best.

If you have any questions or require further background, a great starting point is the world carshare site itself, and in addition you can address them to the editor here at World Streets.

New Mobility Partnerships, Paris. 18 February 2010

Dear members and supporters of World Carshare,

After twelve years of long and faithful service to the concept of carsharing as a great and even noble way of getting around in our day-to-day lives, today is the day in which I am obliged to change the rules of the game for World Carshare. As most of you know, after more than a decade running this as a wide open shared enterprise, I do this with no little regret. But as the Chinese philosopher Lao Tze reminded us so long ago: after ten years of notoriety even the greatest poet in China should change his village and change his name. So in this Year of the Tiger and with his good counsel in mind, I will keep my name but today is the day we make a few changes in our village.

The new rules of the game: Rather than being free and open to all, from this day on our World Carshare will be run along, let us say, more "commercial" lines. No not commercial really, but nonetheless as I have indicated in an earlier note on the subject, for reasons of necessity we now have to get better at sharing the load. You understand of course that world carsharing simply cannot be a one-man job.

Now while my earlier calls for support have gone pretty much ignored by the great majority of the close to five hundred people currently signed in to this forum, happily several handfuls of you have stepped forward to help share the burden: something like two dozen individuals, a total of one carshare supplier, and as of yesterday a generous grant from one of our national partners who shares our belief that carsharing is something that is really worth supporting. These are good steps forward to help us make this work, but until all this work is fully and fairly supported, we now have to move to our new and somewhat more austere rules set. It works like this:

As of this morning, all standing subscriptions of our close to five hundred members are being canceled. In exact parallel with this, I am sending out letters of invitation to those people and groups who have recently been in touch either with individual (subscriptions) or collective support -- or as volunteers indicated that they will continue to be ready to share with us their information and insights on the sector. In addition to this, we will continue to maintain free access to anyone coming in from the developing countries, unfunded local environmenal and similar public interest groups, and of course students and others of limited means and high interest.

Several of our number have indicated their willingness to work with us to identify and eventually secure more substantial support from public agencies in their country who share our interests. This would be extremely important to guarantee our future viability, and I hope that others of you will now get in touch so that we can discuss how we might work together to tailor and put this approach to work in your country. If we can get a handful of committed public sector partners behind this, we will be able to return to our former wide open working context, which to my mind is far the best way to get the job done.

The months ahead are going to be extremely active ones in our slice of the sustainable transportation puzzle. This work is going to be led by the communications within and collaboration from members of the consortium. I very much hope that you will be among us to take part in this process of building knowledge and consensus on a literally worldwide basis, and in an area in which both are much needed.

So there you have it World Carshare friends. 2010 is the Year of the Tiger and if we are going to make sustainable development work in our cities and daily lives, it will not be because we are docile little pussies. I hope to hear from you and that you will join us as part of the solution. I promise you, the world needs us.

Best from Paris -- a city incidentally where when World Carshare just getting underway there were zero carshare operators and zero understanding of the part of the city as to what their role in this might be. And where today there are a handful of highly competitive firms offering more cars, more rides, to more people every day, and all that under the benevolent eye of city authorities who have got the message and have shown themselves ready to do their bit to bring these great services to more and more people everyday. And you can take my word for it, that was no accident.

Eric Britton

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Attachment:

Some final words of background and a few reminders just in case it may have escaped your attention:

1. The World CarShare Consortium (1997 text):
"This free, cooperative, independent, international communications program supports carsharing projects and programs, worldwide. Since 1997 it offers a convenient place on the web to gather and share information and independent views on projects and approaches, past, present and planned future, freely and easily available to all comers."

2. Why we support carsharing (1998 text):
"Why does The Commons support a concept that may to some appear to be so off-beat and marginal as carsharing? Simple! We think it's a great, sustainable, practical mobility idea whose time has come and whose potential impact is quite simply huge. Carsharing: the missing link in your city's sustainable transport system."

3. Comments and accolades from readers of World Carshare – www.acknowledgments.worldcarshare.com

4. Ditto from one hundred and one readers of World Streets – http://tinyurl.com/ws-101

5. Entries over last year on World Streets concerning carsharing – Click here.

6. Who came into World Carshare today:


Carsharing: The last nail in the coffin of old mobility.

I rest my case.

Eric Britton
Editor, World Streets

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1st National Working Party on Carsharing in France "The Culture of Carsharing"

The following notes were prepared on the fly to guide my presentation as the "closing summary" I was invited to make at the closure of the Strasburg conference. I took it as my task to sum up a certain number of observations that the formal presentations and the lively exchanges over the day brought to mind. And then to round them out here with some other findings and recommendations that I hope will be useful to the carshare community in France. The presentation itself was in French, but if you turn to Youtube.com you will see an informal commentary in English to round out these bare notes.

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World Carshare 2013 - Notes for Short Reports

Carsharing is most unevenly distributed over the world map. There are great extremes, running from countries like Switzerland in which it is universally known and widely practiced, to the situation of most countries on the planet where even the word is not much known.  For this reason our 2013 country profiles have to be ingenious and flexible, one size will not fit all, if we are  to give our readers a feel for the full range of practices and issues. Let's have a look, starting with some "carshare basics".

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Stop press! Carsharing is apparently not dead after all.*

We always enjoy a good knock-up on World Streets. Keeps us thinking. After yesterday's piece in which Nicolas le Douarec undertook to stretch our minds and challenge us to consider carsharing from some other perspectives, including apparently in a coffin, we hear today from an old friend Michael Glotz-Richter from Bremen who has been orchestrating carsharing in his city and trans-European collaboration in the field for the last decade, running an EU program which currently goes by the somewhat mystifying acronym of momo (see below). Here is what Michael has to say about yesterday's reported corpse.

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Rural carshare project - A thinking exercise & Invitation for comment

We keep reading and are repeatedly informed that for carsharing to work there must be good public transport, cycling and other mobility arrangements as indispensable complements. In other words, for carsharing to work you have to be not only in a city, but in a certain kind of city. This position has been an article of faith for many carshare observers for more than a decade, and while there is a certain logic to it, upon inspection it turns out  there is a lot more to successful carsharing than that.

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North American Carsharing Trends: 2013

This contribution by Susan Shaheen and Adam Cohen in which they pick out and analyze  some of the main trends and eventual future prospects of the carshare "industry" in North America is the second country report in this World Streets 2013/14 series updating our readers on the latest developments internationally in this fast-moving, fast-developing field of new ways of owning and using cars. To access all the reports in this series thus far, you are invited to click to  http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/category/carshare/

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"Carsharing 2000": Sustainable Transport’s Missing Link

Paris, 21 October 2013. How much we learned about car sharing, and more importantly sustainable transport in cities, over the last decade and a half? To put that question into perspective, please find below the full text of a year 2000 collaborative report prepared here in Paris with the help of knowledgeable colleagues from around the world which does a pretty good job of summing up the state-of-the-art state of thinking about these matters at the end of the 20th century. Have a look at this 13 year old overview of the industry and its prospects, and tell us what you think.

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Kaohsiung 2010 Papers: Will Carsharing Work in China?

Although the interest is increasing, research about carsharing in China is still at a low level. The objective of this paper is to assess the feasibility for carsharing to work in China, and to find out which city in China is best suited for carsharing to first be tested. Therefore, this paper evaluates current transport background for carsharing in two of China’s major cities, and comparisons were conducted, focusing on: 1) transportation policy which relates to carsharing, 2) geographic features, and 3) demographic characteristics of residents. The main conclusion from this study is that carsharing has a great possibility for development in Beijing and Shanghai . . .

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This Week on World Streets: Weekly Digest, 10 March 2014

World Streets: The Politics of Transport in Cities

Each week  subscribers to World Streets - presently numbering 5,407 from 149 countries on all continents - received a single mailing in the form of a weekly digest which briefly resumes all of the activity of the preceding week. Below you will find a listing of the articles published over the period 3-10 March 2014, during which we were hard at work on a series of carsharing projects.  In a world of information overload, this is a handy way to keep up on what is going on at the leading edge of the new Mobility Agenda..

- - > * Click  here for your free subscription.

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Carsharing in Germany: 2014 Perspectives

Germany is among the world leaders when it comes to the development of carsharing, as the following figures and graphics clearly illustrate. One of the primary reasons for this success has been the existence of strong networks and relationships between the cities and carshare operators over the last decade and more. And in this process the Bundesverband CarSharing e.V. (bcs) -- the industry association of the traditional car sharing organisations in Germany -- has played an important role. Let us have a look at their summary information on the situation in 2014, as well as in the preceding 17 years which have shown steady development and strong growth.

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The World Carshare Consortium (1997 - present)

This free, cooperative, independent, international communications program supports carsharing projects and programs, world wide. Since 1997 it offers a convenient place on the web to gather and share information and independent views on projects and approaches, past, present and planned future, freely and easily available to all comers.

- - > Check it out at http://worldcarshare.com/

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World Streets Annual New Mobility Country Reviews: An ultra-short progress report on carsharing in Iceland

This series strives to try to provide a balanced view reporting on how the practice of sharing cars is progressing in countries and cities around the world. Including in places that have yet to create their own carshare operations or pubic programs to investigate or support them. The case of Iceland is one among many, showing how the roll-up takes time and the importance of convincing of those who have yet to embrace the broader new mobility approach to transport and environment. Let's have a look.

This in today from Morten Lange, World Streets Sentinel in Reykjavík, Iceland.

Here is an ultra-short report from Iceland:

1. At present there is none.

2. The relatively new NGO here in Iceland called Society for a Carfree Lifestyle ( Samtök um bíllausan lífsstíl, http://www.billaus.is ) applied for a grant from the government last year to write a report exploring the possibilities for a carsharing club or company.

3. Sadly they were turned down, and since that not much has been happening on that front as far as I understand.

4. They might be interested in joining the World Carshare Forum so, I copied this email to a contact within the board at Bíllaus, whom I promised to inform about the World Carshare forum and this series.

# # #

The author:
Morten Lange describes himself as "as an advocate for cycling and other healthy transport (in my spare time and then some)". He lives, works and pedals in Reykjavik Iceland

# # #
Commentary:

With a regional population of about two hundred thousand, distinguished by per capita car ownership among the highest in the world at more than 500 vehicles per 1000 residents (an average of well more than one per household), and a high standard of living despite the recent economic meltdown, it is hard to imagine that there is not ample space for some kind of carsharing operation or at least a preparatory program in the region -- if only to take a first hard look at how it might play a role in the area's transportation system. And if we add to this otherwise favorable situation for carsharing, the fact that income levels have plunged as a result of the crisis, it would seem that the considerable economic advantages that carsharing can offer should make it an important part of the current policy scene.

It is a fine thing that Morten Lange and others in Iceland are taking the time and trouble to get more people to thinking about carsharing in their country, and it is great luck that he is not alone in this. When we set up the World Carshare Consortium back in the closing years of the last decade, one of our objectives was to provide an open forum for peer group support and exchanges of information and experience in this key sustainable transport mode. And gradually over this decade we have seen others come in to do the same with strong programs of their own.

Among these the original "Moses" project of the European Union - "Car-Sharing project within the City of Tomorrow - mobility services for urban sustainability" (see http://www.uitp.org/Working-Bodies/Car-Sharing/pics/moses-KeysToCarSharings.pdf for a good summary of this program); and currently the (somewhat wierdly named) successor program – "momo: More options for energy-efficient transport through carsharing" at http://www.momo-cs.eu. (We hope to present a report on this important long term EU effort to help inspire and support more and better carsharing at a later point in this series. The EU is to be congratulated for sticking to this program; continuity being one of the vital keys to the transition to sustainable cities. )

Likewise since 2005 the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) has created its own UITP CarSharing Platform at http://www.uitp.org/Public-transport/carsharing/index.cfm, aimed at bringing together all actors of the sector, i.e. car-sharing operators, public transport operators, organizing authorities, the industry, and academic members and stimulating interaction, debate, and the exchange of good practices in order to promote and develop car- sharing worldwide.

In addition to these international efforts we are seeing a plethora of national support programs organized in various ways in almost all of the countries that are already well into the carshare development cycle. These you will see more about in the various country reports in this series.

Stay tuned. More follows.

The editor

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