“This is the data we’ve been waiting for – it proves that car-sharing is changing the car culture for the better,” said City CarShare Executive Director Larry Magid.
The country’s first major study of the impacts of car-sharing, financed by the Federal Highway Administration’s Value Pricing Program shows the San Francisco Bay Area’s City CarShare, a non-profit group, is having measurable impacts in reducing driving, transportation costs, private car ownership, and environmental hazards.
The findings by Robert Cervero, a professor with Univeristy of Califonia at Berkeley’s Institute of Urban and Regional Development, are the latest in his three-year evaluation of the City CarShare’s effects on travel, car ownership, the environment, parking and the quality of life in neighborhoods.
Cervero’s study shows that many hoped-for benefits have occurred:
* 30% of households that participate in City CarShare have sold one or more of their
privately-owned cars; 67% have chosen not to purchase an additional car.
* Most trips are made outside of peak travel hours.
* Overall per-capita automobile travel among City CarShare members has dropped 47 percent, while use of public transit, walking and bicycling by CarShare members has increased.
* City CarShare is saving 13,000 miles of vehicle travel, 720 gallons of gasoline, and 20,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions each day.
City CarShare, which opened in 2001, has 3,000 members. They can reserve any car in City CarShare’s fleet, paying $4 an hour and 44 cents per mile, including gasoline. Prices are cut in half during off-peak hours, 10 p.m. – 10 a.m., at $2 an hour. Member fees cover maintenance, insurance and gas.
Contact Kathleen Maclay for a copy of the report.
Contact Professor Robert Cervero. He will be presenting his study at the January 2004 meeting of the Transportation Resource Board in Washington, D.C.
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www.citycarshare.org
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