A recent article entitled "Rebel without a car" that appeared in the Los Angeles Times Business section on Oct. 9, 2009 indicates that a shift in attitudes is beginning to happen in the USA, at least among the younger generation.
The article, reported by Martin Zimmerman, cites a J.D. Power and Associates market research report that:
"Online discussions by teens indicate shifts in perceptions regarding the necessity of and desire to own cars." Part of the reason, the article says is that during the current recession "the cost of owning a car probably makes less sense than it did when gas was 30¢ per gallon..." The report suggests that, "with the advent of social media and other forms of electronic communities, teens perceive less of a need to physically congregate and less of a need for a mode of transportation."
The analysis focused on teens, ages 12-18, and "early careerists", ages 22-29. The change in was identified from monitoring hundreds of thousands of auto-related websites, blogs, and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
The comments about the article on the LA Times blogsite were also interesting.
Carsharing was one topics up for consideration at the second Multi-Mobility Forum sponsored by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority on October 8. The driving force is the SB 375 passed by the California legislature last year mandating substantial cuts in greenhouse gases from transportation by 2020. Attending were representatives from many of the cities in the LA region.
Some people attending remembered the "glory days" of carsharing in Los Angeles region when Flexcar had more than 250 vehicles that were finally starting to generate revenues. They wondered what it would take to attract a major carsharing operator like Zipcar or Hertz Connect back again.
Technically, carsharing never completely left the area. Even before the merger with Zipcar, Flexcar had scaled-back the LA fleet (as they did in other markets, as well) and Zipcar continues to provide about 20 carsharing vehicles at the UCLA and USC campuses and immediately adjacent areas.
In my short presentation I reminded everyone that carsharing isn't a transportation demand management strategy by itself (like transit, ridesharing or bicycling), but it's the "glue" that can increase participation in these programs since it provides an alternative to car ownership (or second car ownership). And, as we all know (from personal experience):
Car ownership = Car over-use
Several of the presentations were about bicycle programs, including an interesting program to encourage people to buy folding bicycles for use on transit (see photo at the top of this post). I was personally fascinated by the folding bicycle demonstrated by Big Fish at the forum and also pleased to see the Bike Station was developing a modular approach to provide services through its new incarnation as Mobis.
I think public bicycles have some important lessons for carsharing. Most importantly, the lesson from the Paris Velib system, is to Think Big. Only by thinking big (and doing big) can you attract the kind of public attention that can make a difference. In addition, in my presentation I offered some suggestions for working with carsharing companies. I've posted several of the slides from presentation at the end of this post.
Unfortunately, unable to attend this session was Dan Sturges of Intrago Mobility, who coined the phrase multi-mobility and has one of the clearest visions of what the future of personal transportation could look like. His vision includes a combination of small electric and pedal vehicle for short trips ("near car") and strategically-located carsharing vehicles in clusters near major hubs for longer trips ("far cars"). His company is putting together the system that will make all this possible.
Several cities in the LA area are ripe for large-scale "classic" neighborhood carsharing (again): Long Beach and Santa Monica, in particular and I wish them well. Many thanks to Fred Silver of Calstart and Robin Blair of LA Metro for hosting the event.
I was reminded recently how easy it is to lose sight that a lot of what happens in North America happens in Canada. Oh, ya, those guys up there.
Communauto has been growing for 15 years - 5 years longer than any of us Gringos "south of the border". It was founded by Benoît Robert and his collaborators in 1994. Now Communauto serves over 20 000 members, has a fleet over 1000 self-serve vehicles, divided throughout 310 parking stations in the greater regions of Quebec City, Montreal, Sherbrooke and Gatineau.
CommunAuto has always done things its own way: started as a school project in 1994, it was a nonprofit with 6 vehicles - 4 Pontiac Fireflies and 2 Ford Festivas. In 1997 Benoit took the company private merging operations in Quebec City and Montreal. (Here's a link to an English translation of his the original market research and a short history of the company in French.) It has unique rate plans not copied from anyone - charging the highest monthly fees and lowest per hour rates of any carshare, anywhere - as low as $1.60 per hour on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
And CommunAuto has traditional kept its vehicles in service much longer than other carshares, up to 5 years at one point, giving them much better cost structure.
Something else CommunAuto has done that very few others have is a detailed analysis of greenhouse gas reduction from their operations. Completed in February 2007, the consulting firm of Tecsult estimates that as a result of carsharing each CommunAuto member has reduced their CO2 production by 1.2 tons per year. Tecsult estimates that if the market potential of carsharing was attained, this service alone would lead to a reduction of CO2 emissions equivalent to 5.6 times the reduction targeted for alternative modes of transportation by the 2006-2012 Action Plan – Quebec, all without any costs for the taxpayer. These numbers reflect the fact that almost 90% of CommunAuto member households are car free, much higher that 30-40% typical in the US.
To jump start the 15th anniversary, Communauto organized a photo event on September 5th to make the short film (above) demonstrating the advantages of car sharing in our cities. In October close to 150 people attended a celebration hosted at Montreal’s City Hall with partners, elected representatives and long-lasting users of Communauto’s services revisited the company’s most memorable moments.
Beyond being a role model for many car sharing organizations in North America, Communauto participated in developing a code of ethics subscribed to by many carsharing organizations. On the operation front they have developed partnerships with public transit and taxi companies and, put a lot of effort into integrating Smart electric vehicles in its car fleet, including a recent partnership with Veolia and an earlier project Branché around 2000). Below is a chart of their growth up to 10,000 members.
The new carshare on the street, Connect By Hertz, is showing it means business. After the initial launch in Manhattan, London and Paris, Connect spent some time getting their feet on the ground. But they were busy in the spring and by this summer Connect had expanded their New York fleet to over 400 hundred vehicles - competing in Zipcar's sweetest neighborhoods all over Manhattan. The growth was facilitated by their partnership with Icon Parking, Connect now has locations from the tip of Manhattan up to East and West 90th Streets. In comparison Zip has over 2000 vehicles in several boroughs and adjacent New Jersey communities).
A recent check of the Hertz Connect web site now lists Boston, Chicago, Washington DC and San Francisco, each with one location with several vehicles. In Chicago, for example, the downtown Loop location has 4 vehicles - 2 Priuses, a Ford Escape SUV and a Camry. (The Washington DC location is at Marriot hotel corporate headquarters and could be laying the groundwork for a very interesting partnership.) Oddly Denver isn't one of the cities listed, although the Spire condo project there indicates they'll be offering residents Connect services. That would make Denver the city with the most carsharing services right now - E-Go (Boulder Carshare), Occasional Car (a recent start up with 2 vehicles) and Hertz Connect.
And Connect has added a couple of college/university campuses to its list - having taken them away from Zipcar. These are naturals for Connect since Hertz likely has a branch in the town so adding carsharing is a piece of cake.
But exactly how they're achieving this growth is a bit of a mystery - since they don't seem to be using any of the traditional marketing approaches - transit advertising, media trade outs, etc. They have done some interesting awareness campaigns using Go Gorilla Media including sidewalk logo projections, sidewalk stenciling (is that legal?) and fake "lost dog" signs (the tear offs give the Hertz Connect web site). Hertz Connect is going after a somewhat different customer demographic - offering more vehicles on the upscale end. In addition to a Mini or a Prius at just about every location, and the usual assortment of Mazda 3s and Toyota Yaris, there are many Camrys and some locations have Volvo C70s and even a Mercedes GLK 350!
Hertz Connect is being helped in NYC by Zipcar's on-going problems with customer service. The Zipcar call center can be infuriating (I know from experience) and fleet maintenance in NYC (and other cities) apparently leaves a LOT to be desired - read a bunch of uphappy Zipcar members complaining (and very few members complimenting) on Yelp.
The London and Paris operations of Connect remain mysteries with only minor expansions of the fleet. But perhaps that's not surprising because Zipcar has been having trouble figuring out the UK market and they've been in London and LOT longer than Hertz Connect. And speaking of mysteries, Mint in New York, is another mystery - very little action since their launch.
And while I'm on the subject of car rental companies operating carsharing, it's worth nothing that U-Carshare by U-Haul has been quietly adding additional cities and a couple of schools, as well. That said, the U-Carshare marketing strategy is also a mystery - almost invisible in my home town of Portland, Oregon (although they finally had a presence at the recent Sunday Parkways event I wrote about earlier).
It's shaping up to be an interesting year in carsharing.
Eric Britton, Robin Chase and others have written eloquently about the urgency for making massive changes in our transportation system. What will offset a big chunk of that car use is pretty clear: a lot more walking and cycling, increased use of public transportation, ridesharing, plus a dash of carsharing!
My guess is this will probably involve some high tech solutions - cell phones and social networking services, electric bikes, etc. - but mostly it's going to be a lot more old fashioned shoe leather and bike tires on the pavement. But right now we have a lot of wonderful solutions and a big gap between what we're doing and where we want to be.
But what combination of factors will motivate a large number of people to change their these transportation habits is a mystery. Carsharing is indeed a "missing link", but it's only one of a number of "missing links" in the chain.
Recently, the City of Portland is sponsored the latest in a series of Sunday Parkways bike rides, attracting thousands of people, families, and kids for a ride through several neighborhoods. Cross streets are controlled and it's a veritable party attracting thousands of people over a 5+ mile circular route. The other part of event is scheduling community groups, food vendors and musicians of all kinds to set up in the parks along the route. It is truly inspiring to see so many people on bikes and it seems can't help create awareness and experience of cycling in a broader section of the population than the "hard core bike commuters". It's a small, but I think important step in the cultural shift in our thinking and transportation habits. You can see a nice Streetfilms video of the first event last year here.
The start of such a shift was reflected in an interesting essay by a Canadian newspaper columnist who characterized the change in the change in their attitude about cars from "object of desire" to "necessary evil". I think this captures one of the cultural shifts perfectly - for so many people cars are now becoming a necessary evil.
Another cultural shift I've been thinking about could be a basic change in the type of cars we own - instead of the maximum car we can afford, we would spend our money on the minimal car we need for 90% of the trips we take. This minimal car wouldn't have to be a "econobox". Daimler has shown there's a market for a $15,000 city car and Europe has got a wide variety of upscale microcars! For now, car ownership in the US is probably too cheap and awareness of the impacts of ownership too limited to see this happening very much.
What's needed now is some good minds to think about the intermediate steps to facilitate this cultural shift and conditions to promote them. With the passage of climate change legislation in the US and a new commitment to addressing environmental problems, the next decade is going to be interesting.
My postings has always been sporadic but none more so than recently. My wife and I were on a 3 week trip to India - our first ever - and it was a stark reminder that most of the rest of world operates under conditions a lot more basic than our gold plated lifestyle. I was also struck by the progressive policies (a ban on plastic bags in Himachal Pradesh for example) and active discussion about climate change in the newspapers.
The transportation system in India was already at capacity - trains were long and very crowded; buses were packed for 12 hours a day; roads were narrow, bumpy and travel was slow. And we could see that even relative prosperity was resulting in rapid expansion in the number private cars - not only the local brands - Maruti Suzuki and Tata but also the traditional "Asian" brands like Honda, Toyota and even new brands like Hyundai, Honda, Toyota and Chevy (!) were in evidence.
For better and worse, the Tata Nano, the $2000 car, has captured the imagination of world. But there were lots of other awfully-darn-small cars already in India, as well as the infamous autorickshaws everywhere. The good news about these autorickshaws in Delhi, at least, is that the city has mandated that all of them, and all buses, be converted to compressed natural gas (CNG).
Remarkably in the few weeks we were there I came across this op ed piece from the Times of India that mentioned carsharing - >Can India Really Afford Cheap Cars?">Can India Really Afford Cheap Cars by Martin Wright, the editor of the UK-based Green Futures magazine. In the discussion the author wonders if an battery electric Tata Nano would be possible possible and then goes one step further:
You might not be able to afford an electric Nano — but why own something that you don't use every day? So what about a state-sponsored Tata Zero Carbon Car Club, of the sort springing up across European neighbourhoods, giving people the benefits of using a vehicle when they need it, without the hassle and cost of owning one when they don't? It could help cut congestion, too: all the evidence suggests that car club members drive less than private car owners — because they don't feel they have to justify their hefty investment in their vehicle by using it in preference to the bus or metro.
It's worth remembering that India has some street cred in the alternative transportation sector as well - it's the home to the Reva EV (sold in the UK as the G-Wiz). For now most of the carsharing going on in India will continue to be taxis! But what next?
I was honored to be invited as one of several outside speakers at a one-day workshop to promote the growth of carsharing in Spain held recently in Madrid. The more than 60 people who attended came from a wide range of backgrounds — including Spain's only existing carsharing company, Avancar, various government agencies and several start ups in various stages.
Madrid is a city with many beautiful boulevards, as well as neighborhoods with narrow streets and wonderful surprises everywhere. As you can see, it also has it's share of traffic problems. And we were told that the Spanish may have a fascination for cars, and car ownership, approaching that of the USA.
The day began with a wonderful reminder of the connection between land use and transportation from Michael Glotz Richter and a humorous introduction James Bond in Bremen carsharing video. Conrad Wagner continued with a reminder of Traffic... Mobility... Access... that carsharing is one of many options of mobility management and reviewed how Mobility Switzerland had grown nationally and now was able to provide service in many smaller communities, including the partnership with the Swiss postal service.
In my presentation I described the way in which Zipcar, and previously Flexcar, had set a new standard for marketing and defining the carsharing service in terms of a lifestyle choice and not merely as functional transportation option. I emphasized the importance of partnerships with local government and transit agencies, that competition between two carsharing providers was okay and that companies and the government need to think big (the lesson of Velib). I encourage the Spanish government to create national network by setting standards, supporting local providers, providing carsharing options for smaller cities, integrate carsharing with transit & rail
Local perspective came from several speakers including a perspective on the energy saving potential of carsharing, on customer surveys and possibilities of carsharing in the Basque country. Valuable perspective was provided by speakers from Avancar in Barcelona (formerly Catalunya Carsharing), including Pau Noy, one of the founders of Avancar and operational experience from Dirk Bogaert of Avancar, which included a demonstration of the Convadis access system on one of their hybrid Honda Civics so people could get a better feel for the technology.
The final roundtable discussion included a number of questions about marketing, changing peoples habits and about parking - on street, naturally.
The workshop was very well organized by Enrique Huertas and staff of the transportation consultancy Colin Buchanan in Madrid. We hope that they are successful in helping local governments understand the importance of carsharing and that entrepreneurs are able to get support to launch carsharing all over Spain. Here's a description of the workshop in Spanish ( or a machine translation in English) with links to all the speaker's presentations.And if nothing else, here's a link to my presentation (3.8 mb).
1905 NE Clackamas St., Portland, Oregon 97232 - 503-313-1320, United States
Founder of Carsharing Portland, the first commercial carsharing company in the US in 1998. Later my company joined Flexcar and I had various responsibilities with them, including setting up their San Diego operation. Since 2003 I have been an independent consultant.
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