Car sharing

Social innovation-based schemes in the transport sector results in focusing attention on what has been described as the ‘shared’ or ‘sharing economy’. These are travel activities or services that emphasise ‘sharing’ or ‘collaboration’ rather than ownership. Related to sharing is an element of self-organisation, that is individuals or communities organising themselves to get involved. This participation is often integral to the success of the activity or service and can be seen as a deliberate lifestyle choice and thus adding to a sense of belonging to a particular community.

Thus it follows that behaviour change can be as a result of participation rather than as the result of an extrinsic ‘reward’. Within the transport sector examples of social innovation include car sharing, bike sharing, ridesharing and walking school buses. Smartphone apps, such as BlaBlaCar, Uber(Pool), Toogethr, amongst others have stimulated people to getting in cars with strangers and to summoning rides from their smartphones app, which handle the logistics of where they leave from and at what time. Moreover, these smartphones apps facilitate cost reduction by offering paid shared trips in which passengers split rides and costs.

The aforementioned apps are all-inclusive, targeting everyone. Although a large pool of participants is needed for car sharing, enough participants are attracted by most of these apps. Complexity and costs are low. However, there are no estimates on their effect on car use reduction, and they do not fit within specific schemes initiated by transport stakeholders (they are just provided by commercial parties; for everyone to be used). An exception to this is Let’s Carpool, which is a government initiative in New Zealand.

In general, impacts vary across different social categories, with the evidence suggesting that car sharing is much more attractive to younger age groups and to student age groups. Although impact on CFV use is limited, there is evidence that car sharing can have the impact of reducing both car use, increased multimodality and reducing car ownership.