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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

3:48 PM

Carsharing Association Launched


Following several years of ad hoc meetings, independent carsharing organizations in North America launched a formal organization to promote their interests - the Carsharing Association. Presently, they are a variety of non-profit, for profit companies, most in the US and Canada.

Independent carshare bascially means - not Zipcar, Connect or U Carshare. Along the way, they have added an international flavor with carshares in Australia (GoGet) and Brazil (Zazcar). Car2Go and none of the start up peer-to-peer carsharing companies in California are members, although at least two of them have met with the group.

The Car Sharing Association has a well-developed "Code of Ethics" which builds on the earlier Code the group developed several years ago. The code describes standards of customer service, operations, environmental standards, etc. One goal of the group is that government agencies wanting to define carsharing eligible for partnership services, such as on-street parking, will use membership in the Association as their criteria.

An important test of the group will be watching how the organization deals with competition situations. Previously, there was no discussion about competition in earlier versions of the Code, and there seemed to be an unwritten expectation that since the companies were all community-based they would not move into each others' territory. Now, the Code has specific language about how competitors should treat each other.

At this early stage no carshares in Europe are members of the Carsharing Association presumably not finding any great need to belong to another organization when there are organizations that have more immediate benefit close at hand - CarPlus in the UK, the Bundesverband Carsharing Deutschland, Autopartage France and the Italian gruppo.

Formalizing the Car Sharing Association is a useful next step for independent carshares to take and the code of ethics a good way to insure that the benefits of carsharing to individuals, cities and the environment are not lost in the rush to make a profit along the way. Hopefully, the group will come to see the value of an organization with "the big guys" in it, as well, since there is much needed in the regulatory area of every country in order to level the playing field of car ownership and carsharing. Good luck.
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Friday, January 14, 2011

8:51 AM

Carsharing and Shared Vehicle Sessions at TRB 2011










The 90th annual Transportation Research Board Meeting will be happening January 23-27, 2011 in Washington DC.  It's the great annual meeting of academic researchers and industry practitioners.   There are several sessions that include presentations about various aspects of carsharing, as well as public bicycle system and multi-modal connectivity.  Sessions general include several presentations summarizing research followed by questions and answer. Complete information about attending TRB can be found here.


While the conference isn't cheap, it is good and you will be able to to attend many other interesting sessions as well as interact with the leading people in transportation. (Sorry, it is really isn't possible to "crash" sessions without registering.) TRB members get a discount on the conference and can participate in defining the discussion about the research agenda in various areas. 


 Carsharing sessions are sponsored by the the AP020 subcommittee on Emerging and Innovative Public Transport and Technologies, chaired by Dr. Susan Shaheen of UC Berkeley.















Below is a summary of the carsharing and shared vehicle sessions at the 2011 TRB:

Hilton, 
Jan 23 2011 1:30PM- 4:30PM; i
ncludes:


Total Connectivity Ideas (P11-0493) 
     Sturges, Dan - IntraGo and 






Raney, Steve - Cities21.org 
Interconnecting Public Transport and Shared Transport (P11-0500) 
     O'Sullivan, Sean - Avego Limited 
Cybercars for Sustainable Mobility – A European Collaborative Approach (P11-0496) 
     Parent, Michel - French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control 
Architecturally Linking All the Pieces (P11-0497) 
     McDonald, Shannon Sanders - American Institute of Architects 
Public-Private Innovation: Implementing Seamless Mobility Linking Modes, Services, Technologies,   
Design, Policy, and New Business Models (P11-0498) 
     Zielinkski, Susan - University of Michigan 
Panel Discussion (P11-0499) 
     Young, Stanley E. - University of Maryland, College Park, 



Liu, Rongfang - New Jersey Institute of Technology, 






Cervero, Robert - University of California, Berkeley, 





Fabian, Lawrence J. - Trans.21, S






haheen, Susan A. - University of California, Berkeley, and 






Andreasson, Ingmar J. - Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden 






Marriott, 



Jan 24 2011 10:15AM- 12:00PM; 


Includes:








Carsharing and Older Adults (P11-0218) 
     Shaheen, Susan A. - University of California, Berkeley 
Older Adults and Walking: The Benefits and the Promise (P11-0219) 
     Ragland, David R. - University of California, Berkeley 
Peer-to-Peer Carsharing: Market Analysis and Potential Growth (11-3463) 
     Hampshire, Robert Cornelius - Carnegie Mellon University 
Volunteer Senior Transportation: The Vanguard of Community Transportation (P11-0221) 
     Freund, Katherine - ITNAmerica 













Hilton, Jan 25 2011 8:00AM- 9:45AM; includes:
Understanding the Factors Affecting Vehicle Usage and Availability in Carsharing Networks: Case Study of Communauto Carsharing System from Montreal, Canada (11-0840) 
     de Lorimier, Alexandre - Quartier International de Montréal, Canada, El-Geneidy, Ahmed M. - McGill University, Canada 
Broadening the Market for Carshare? Results of a Pilot Project in the Netherlands (11-0615) 
     Martens, Karel and Pasman, Sander - Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands, Sierzchula, William - Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Estimation of Carsharing Demand Using Activity-Based Microsimulation Approach: Model and Preliminary Results (11-2077) 
     Ciari, Francesco, Schuessler, Nadine and  Axhausen, Kay W. - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich
Hangzhou Public Bicycle: Understanding Early Adoption and Behavioral Response to Bikesharing in Hangzhou, China (11-3041) 




     Shaheen, Susan A., Zhang, Hua, Martin, Elliot and Guzman, Stacey - University of California, Berkeley


Meeting of the Subcommittee on Emerging and Innovative Public Transport and Technologies, 
AP020 

Hilton, L'Enfant room,  Ja
n. 25, 1:30 to 5:30pm

Hilton, 
Jan 24 2011 2:30PM- 5:00PM; 
includes: 
Typology of Carsharing Members (11-1236) - D08 
     Morency, Catherine, 
Trepanier, Martin, and 
Agard, Bruno - Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada 
There are a number of other topics being presented at this session.


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Wednesday, January 5, 2011

7:54 PM

Millennials Driving Less and Enjoying It More

I've mentioned before that the "younger generation" seems to be developing a different relationship to driving and car ownership than when I was growing up.  

Who better to find out more than Zipcar, which last fall commissioned a survey of 18-34 year olds (one of their sweet spots) and released a short Powerpoint on the results.

The survey of 1025 adults, including 287 Millenials found that:
  • 54% reported they "sometimes choose to spend time with friends online instead of driving"
  • 45% "consciously made an effort to reduce how much I drive"
  • 67% said "If there were more options in my area, such as public transportation, carsharing or convenient carpooling, I would drive less than I do now"
  • 80% "somewhat" or "strongly agreed" that the high cost of car ownership is making it difficult to own a car
The survey reminded us that Millenials have been hit hard by the recession (although they didn't distinguish how hard hip, urban professionals were affected) and that as a group they were already in debt from school.

The survey was picked up by a couple a couple of writers, the best being by free-lancer Jim Montavalli, who wrote a very nice column Why Facebook is better than driving and recycled it several places.  Montavalli was skeptical that this is actually good for Zipcar and, even after talking to Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith seems to not understand that the less you drive (your own car) the more attractive borrowing a carsharing vehicle becomes.

Of course, Millenials, also called Gen Y, are a hot topic in the automotive and probably just about every other industry.  MillienialMarketing.com had a good overview of the research - "What's Not in a Millenial's shopping cart - a car".   BrandChannel writer Sheila Shayan interviewed Ford Motor Company's Sheryl Connelly, manager global trends and futuring,
  • "I don't think the car symbolizes freedom to Gen Y to the extent it did baby boomers, or to a lesser extent, Gen X-ers. [Digital technology] allows teens to transcend time and place so they can feel connected to their friends virtually… we also understand the context in which they use cars has changed. ... It has nothing to do with performance or getting you from point A to point B. It's just a change in what people expect to be delivered." 
Of course, for the time being, this is perhaps primarily a delay in purchase, not an overall reduction.  But I certainly expect the overall number of cars in the US will continue to decline.
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