Skip to main content

Study finds fewer cars, improved emissions with one-way car-sharing

The University of California, Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) has released results from the first-ever study of one-way car-sharing in North America and its impact on mobility. The researchers say the findings clearly illustrate that one-way car-sharing reduces the number of cars travelling on city roads and occupying parking spaces on city streets. The study, which gathered data from nearly 9,500 North American car2go members residing in Calgary; San Diego; Seattle; Van
July 20, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
The University of California, Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) has released results from the first-ever study of one-way car-sharing in North America and its impact on mobility.

The researchers say the findings clearly illustrate that one-way car-sharing reduces the number of cars travelling on city roads and occupying parking spaces on city streets.

The study, which gathered data from nearly 9,500 North American 4190 car2go members residing in Calgary; San Diego; Seattle; Vancouver; and Washington, DC that between two per cent to five per cent of the car2go population sold a vehicle due to car2go across the study cities. In addition, another seven per cent to 10 per cent of respondents did not acquire a vehicle due to car2go.

The study also found that each car2go vehicle removes between seven to 11 vehicles from city roads (including sold and suppressed), while one to three private vehicles were sold across the five cities per car2go vehicle. In total, car2go took an estimated 28,000-plus vehicles off of the road and reduced parking demand.

Researchers found a six per cent to 16 per cent reduction in vehicle miles travelled (VMT) across the study population (an average of 11 per cent) and a four per cent to 18 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the study population (an average of 10 per cent).

Estimates suggest that car2go's one-way car-sharing service prevented between 10 and 29 million VMT per year per city, depending on assumptions of suppressed mileage, which in turn removed between 5.5 to 12.7 metric tons of GHG emissions per car2go vehicle annually (on average).

The average age of vehicles car2go members reported selling averaged 14.4 years across all the cities, thus helping to remove more polluting vehicles with older emission systems from city streets.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Lyft, Uber have mixed impact on San Fran mobility
    May 14, 2018
    The extent to which ride-hailing has become a real force in the mobility landscape of San Francisco is great for consumers – but there are downsides, a report finds. Andrew Stone takes a look. Uber and Lyft, the two major ride-hailing platforms in San Francisco, are out-competing local cab firms in many ways - and are firmly established as a significant part of the daily mobility mix there, a recent study reveals. Researchers mined publicly-available data derived from the application programming interface
  • Study reveals benefits of electric Beijing taxi fleet
    August 6, 2013
    The impact of introducing plug-in electric vehicles to the streets of Beijing, one of the world’s most polluted cities, has been examined by researchers from the University of Michigan in the ACS journal Environmental Science and Technology. They use big data mining techniques to understand the impact of fleet electrification. As part of the study, the researchers highlight that while plug-in electric vehicles have developed rapidly in recent years there are still uncertainties with regard to market accepta
  • Qualcomm: How Connected Driving Will Reduce Emissions in the EU
    September 14, 2023
    In an era marked by climate change and an urgent need for greener mobility solutions, the advent of connected driving has emerged as a promising frontier in the realm of transportation.
  • Emissions reductions targets to have major impact on transport
    October 28, 2015
    As bold moves aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions have been introduced in California, David Crawford looks at the ramifications for transportation. California Governor Jerry Brown’s recent dramatic raising of the bar on emissions reduction policy for the state has won him praise from Japan, Australia, Europe and the secretariat of the critical UN conference on climate change being held in Paris in November/December 2015. His April 2015 executive order aimed at bringing emissions to 40% below 1990 lev