Most readers will have heard of car-sharing by now. In Europe and Quebec, cooperatives and companies have been formed primarily by green-transportation advocates to provide car access for shorter periods and more locally than car-rental firms. The idea is to make three changes to car access for participants: 1) reduce the cost of car use per year by allowing other users help cover the fixed costs when one doesn't need access, 2) assess the user the full cost of each use each time the car is used, and 3) reduce personal attachment to any particular car. These changes combine to reverse the current trend of automobile-use that increases twice as fast as population.
The reason that car-sharing can have that effect is that, for most car owners, about 85% of the cost of ownership, estimated in 1995 by the Canadian Automobile Association as $7,700 annually for a sub-compact over the first four years of 20,000 km/yr use, are fairly fixed and independent of the level of use.
The clubs are relatively small now, but are growing, and additional clubs are in the organizing stage in many cities, including Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, and Ottawa. At this nascent stage, the clubs are yet to have the desired effect, since most people who have participated were previously either car-free or gave up an old car that was already paid for and was not being used much. They have yet to meet the challenge of attracting individuals and households who will use the clubs' services to replace one or more of their cars.
Although most drivers can relate to health and environmental drawbacks of car use, most will say, not unrealistically, that they have little choice. After all, car-sharing is not much of an improvement to the person who lives in suburbia and who makes 3-5 trips a day with his car, since there are almost no practical destinations within walking distance. The alternatives modes for longer trips, bicycles, taxi, or transit, each have major drawbacks as they are offered today:
So it is expected that the car-owners in these traditional neighbourhoods will eventually get the idea and join up. Yes, they will probably need to make a greater commitment to actually use the services located closest to them (which accounts for their higher real estate values). It is expected that these people will become the first of a new breed of urban dweller, the "propinquitally sensitive" (vs. the "propinquitally challenged") who not only realize the true costs of travelling to those modern "attractors" (the malls) but who start to experience the advantages of the local walking trip: getting to know, and be known by, local shops and offices, getting to know neighbours and thus increasing opportunities to share (e.g., experiences, assistance, and lawnmowers, etc.), and feeling safer (the eyes-on-the-street phenomenon identified by Jane Jacobs in her 1961 classic, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities").
These people will set the example for the suburbanites and exurbanites who will come to realize that using a car will become stigmatized as an admission of not having one's life, literally, together, of risking other's lives and usurping their quiet enjoyment and clean environment, and of participating in the "sprawl game" in which the savings in time that car-use and higher average speeds (brought to us by road engineers) provide are simply eaten up by the resulting sprawl and by retailers and agencies who are continually centralizing their operations and downloading the impacts of longer trips to the customers/clients. K.T. Berger's 1993 "Where the Road and the Sky Collide" graphically plots the pulse of North American drivers.
But what will those in these non-functioning neighbourhoods do? Some will move to older neighbourhoods, pushing real estate values even higher. But many will simply start frequenting the few local stores and offices they have. It won't take long for trend analysts and relators to get the drift. This will spur demand for rezonings for nonresidential uses in locations that are easy for walk to from residential areas (read: not on arterial roads). This will raise the next issue: will neighbourhood groups allow this "violation" of traditional separation of land uses (that cause anything but traditional neighbourhood)? Not at first, at least not until members are able to realize that they cause most of the noisy, dangerous traffic on their streets, and that small-scale businesses that have no parking and that meet identifiable neighbourhood demand, represent the only real way to bring back that "village" feeling of community. The eventual reduction in car use will be matched by the freeing up of major amounts of parking spaces, to be available for a number of other purposes.
I predict that the most successful use of car-sharing will involve some interesting variations.
The authour would appreciate any feedback and can be reached by E-Mail: at chris@c.ties.ottawa.on.ca