This is interesting....
The rest, it seems, are driving more. Across the board, in the five cities surveyed — Calgary and Vancouver as well as San Diego, Seattle and Washington, D.C. — many respondents admitted using public transportation less once they joined the car-sharing platform.
In Calgary, for instance, 30 per cent of those surveyed said they used the bus less once they joined Car2Go compared with just 4 per cent who said they used it more. Urban rail use was similarly diminished. And Car2Go’s Smarts seem to have an especially dramatic effect on taxi use, 65 per cent of Vancouverites saying they used cabs less versus just 3 per cent using them more (the numbers for Calgary were an equally dramatic 65 per cent and 2 per cent).
In other words, Car2Go was often used instead of public transportation or a cab ride rather than replacing a personally-owned car. Indeed, the study reveals that 47 per cent of Vancouver members drove more once they joined Car2Go compared with just 15 per cent of those who said they drove less. The numbers for Washington, D.C., are even worse, with four times as many members reporting they drove more than those who drove less. It turns out, then, that except for those who actually sold their cars — and, of course, those people who didn’t buy an imaginary new car — Car2Go members seemed to be driving more and using public transportation less than they did before joining the ride-sharing service.
http://driving.ca/au...re-questionable
One other factor clouds the future of car sharing. Like the supposed surge in popularity of electric cars that has yet to materialize, there does not yet seem to be a car-sharing revolution in the making. According to AutoRentalNews.com, after more than 10 years of growth, there were but 5,048 shared vehicles on Canadians roads and only 19,115 in the United States as of 2014. That’s compared with the roughly 25 million cars and trucks currently on Canadian roads and the 255 million that prowl American highways.
That might be explained by an anecdotal finding in the Martin/Shaheen study, namely that the average car sold when joining Car2Go was 14.4 years old. While that may be good for the environment — the study says that cars averaging 23 to 25.4 miles per gallon were replaced by the Smart’s 36 mpg — 14-year-old beaters are typically the purview of the young (as well as anyone else with reduced means). And as Automotive News reports, “Millennials [may be] drawn to car-sharing services, but eventually, they buy.” The propensity for car-sharing so often attributed to the young may yet prove illusory. Indeed, as mentioned previously, only two per cent of Car2Go members actually give up their own car in favour of car-sharing.
<p><span style="font-size:12px;"><em><span style="color:rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">"I don’t need a middle person in my pizza slice transaction" <strong>- zoomer, April 17, 2018</strong></span></em></span>