Carsharing services are growing in popularity around the world, and thanks to the University of California Berkeley's Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC), we now have the results of the first-ever one-way carsharing impact study conducted in North America.
Researchers studied car2go’s business model and came to the conclusion that this particular service and others significantly contribute to reduced highway traffic. Fewer vehicles on the road also mean less air pollution.
“car2go's growing U.S. and Canadian membership will only magnify the benefits to urban mobility through a network effect of more city dwellers using fewer cars,” said car2go NA President and CEO Paul DeLong. “car2go's one-way carsharing model is a proven, flexible, and affordable mobility solution. The study illustrates that, by working in tandem with other mobility options like rail, bus, ride- and bike share, car2go is making urban mobility much more efficient while also reducing air pollution.”
Highlights of the TSRC study include:
- The presence of car2go in the five cities studied was estimated to have taken more than 28,000 cars off of city roads;
- car2go is designed to work in concert with urban mass transit systems in numerous cities, and members paired their car2go trips with a bus trip up to 7% more frequently and rail up to 8% more frequently since joining car2go.
It is estimated that car2go's one-way carsharing service helped remove between 5.5-12.7 metric tons of greenhouse gases per car2go vehicle annually (on average).
Enjoying a 25% year-over-year membership growth rate, car2go today has approximately 800,000 North American users in 14 cities ― and 1.9 million worldwide. Some 14,500 smart fortwo cars are available in 30 cities globally.