Impact of Carsharing on Household Vehicle Holdings

Abstract

Carsharing has grown considerably in North America during the past decade and has flourished in metropolitan regions across the United States and Canada. The new transportation landscape offers urban residents an alternative to automobility, one without car ownership. As car-sharing has expanded, there has been a growing demand to understand its environmental effects. This paper presents the results of a North American carsharing member survey (N = 6,281). A before-and-after analytical design is established with a focus on carsharing's effects on household vehicle holdings and the aggregate vehicle population. The results show that carsharing members reduce their vehicle holdings to a degree that is statistically significant. The average number of vehicles per household of the sample drops from 0.47 to 0.24. Most of this shift constitutes one-car households becoming carless. The average fuel economy of carsharing vehicles used most often by respondents is 10 mi/gal more efficient than the average vehicle shed by respondents. The median age of vehicles shed by carsharing households is 11 years, but the distribution covers a considerable range. An aggregate analysis suggests that carsharing has taken between 90,000 and 130,000 vehicles off the road. This equates to 9 to 13 vehicles (including shed autos and postponed auto purchases) taken off the road for each carsharing vehicle.

The autonomous car—a blessing or a curse for the future of low carbon mobility? An exploration of likely vs. desirable outcomes

“…12 Recent evidence for the USA has shown that 11 Car sharing reduced car ownership levels in a US sample by half [87]. 12 We are aware that there are opposite views about this, for example Cox [96,97].…”

Unbundling cars to daily use and infrequent use vehicles—the potential role of car sharing

“…As of January 2014, there were approximately 1.23 million car-sharing members (traditional and one-way) with access to over 17,000 vehicles in the USA (Le Vine et al 2014;Susan Shaheen and Cohen 2013;Susan Shaheen and Cohen 2014). Based on surveys in 2005 and 2008, research in the USA has found that overall traditional car sharing reduces or delays car ownership, removes 9-13 cars from the road with each car-sharing vehicle, increases fuel economy of vehicles driven, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, reduces vehicle miles traveled (VMT), and reduces public transit use while increasing walking, biking, and carpooling (Cervero et al 2007;Martin et al 2010;Martin and Shaheen 2011a;Martin and Shaheen 2011b, c). The number of cars removed from the road may be lower when looking at a larger share of the population and taking into consideration self-selection bias in the analysis (Clewlow 2016).…”

“…The car-sharing space Car sharing is a relatively new mobility option, which began to gain popularity in the early 2000s in North America (E. Martin et al 2010) and slightly earlier in Europe (Jorge and Correia 2013). There are several different models of car sharing available today: Btraditional^or A-to-A; Bone-way,^Bfree-floating,^or A-to-B; and peerto-peer or personal vehicle sharing (note on-demand services or transportation network companies (TNCs), such as Uber, are not considered car sharing in the literature).…”

“…This would imply a welfare gain for the consumer. To better understand to what extent this was available today, we surveyed the types of models in different types of car-sharing fleets ( Martin et al 2010). However, this will make it harder for car sharing to cover infrequent use needs.…”

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“…Most notable is, that it is convenient and cost effective for users [7], [8], and additionally, by being a flexible (short-term) transportation service, it can complement classical means of transportation by intertwining individual mobility with existing public transportation options [9], [10]. Furthermore, earlier studies have exhibited that compared to trips with a privately owned car, car sharing has the capability to decrease the individual car-bound mobility by up to 30% [2], [11]. Beyond the reduced car-bound mobility and the derived lower emissions, using car sharing results in a reduced parking demand and less noise, which makes it an environmentally sustainable form of transportation, for urban areas [2], [11].…”