Skip to main content

Zipcar founder: ‘Car-dominant city has reached its zenith’

Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase has called on urban authorities to embrace multimodal transport in a bid to improve mobility.“The value of a car-dominant city has reached its zenith,” she says in an interview with ITS International. “The city regulatory and physical infrastructure has been built on a personal car-dominant infrastructure. We have spent the last 100 years making car travel in cities the most convenient and cheapest way to the exclusion of everything else.” That creates problems, she
May 23, 2018 Read time: 2 mins

3874 Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase has called on urban authorities to embrace multimodal transport in a bid to improve mobility.

“The value of a car-dominant city has reached its zenith,” she says in an interview with ITS International. “The city regulatory and physical infrastructure has been built on a personal car-dominant infrastructure. We have spent the last 100 years making car travel in cities the most convenient and cheapest way to the exclusion of everything else.”

That creates problems, she continues. “Today, mayors and cities are signalling by price that they are indifferent as to whether you take your zero emissions and small footprint bike or a 25 year-old car that pollutes heavily or indeed a shared taxi or public transit. Currently the city is signalling that ‘all those things are the same to us’.”

Chase, who also spoke at ITS International’s 8545 MaaS Market Atlanta conference, is keen to avoid demonising the car as a travel mode - but is not convinced that developments such as automated vehicles will ease congestion.

She is one of the influencers behind the recently-published %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 link-external Shared Mobility Principles Shared Mobility Principles website link false https://www.sharedmobilityprinciples.org/ false false%> developed by a group of NGOs and adopted by a range of public bodies and mobility players.

The principles call for fair pricing of different mobility options. “The point of doing road congestion pricing and kerb access pricing is so we can start getting at fair user fees across all modes,” she insists. “Personal cars are not paying a fair share and because of that we have been responding to the wrong price signals which is why we don't have enough walking, biking or shared transport modes.”

  • For full interview and MaaS Market Atlanta report, see ITS International May/June issue, out soon

Related Content

  • February 20, 2019
    MaaS Market London: year one update from Whim West Midlands
    Almost a year after it came into operation, Transport for West Midlands’ head of smart travel, Chris Lane, will update delegates at the MaaS Market Conference (London 20 and 21 March) on how the Whim West Midlands pilot scheme is working in practice. Introduced in conjunction with MaaS Global, Whim West Midlands is the UK’s first Mobility as a Service platform to go live to the general public and combines public transport (bus and tram) with on-demand taxis and bike sharing. The initial Pay-As-You-Go se
  • January 10, 2019
    MaaS Market Conference debates transport’s digital dilemma
    A major restructuring of transport services is underway in a growing number of cities worldwide as new consumer-lead business models threaten the future of traditional operators. That’s the message Paul Campion, CEO of UK innovation agency Transport Systems Catapult, will give to delegates at the opening of ITS International’s 2019 MaaS Market Conference (20-21 March, Inmarsat Conference Centre, London). Campion will argue that the digitisation of transport is driving a move from a supplier-centric system
  • January 10, 2019
    MaaS Market Conference debates transport’s digital dilemma
    A major restructuring of transport services is underway in a growing number of cities worldwide as new consumer-lead business models threaten the future of traditional operators. That’s the message Paul Campion, CEO of UK innovation agency Transport Systems Catapult, will give to delegates at the opening of ITS International’s 2019 MaaS Market Conference (20-21 March, Inmarsat Conference Centre, London). Campion will argue that the digitisation of transport is driving a move from a supplier-centric system
  • October 31, 2018
    Groupe PSA trials car-sharing service in Washington, DC
    French car manufacturer Groupe PSA says its ‘free-floating’ car-share service provides members in Washington, DC with access to 600 vehicles. The Free2Move service is available to drivers for a $10 membership fee and does not include late fees, per trip fees or insurance charges, the company adds. Members can use the Free2Move app to locate, book and open/lock the vehicles. This pilot coincides with Maven’s announcement to expand its peer-to-peer car-share service in Washington, DC – and other US