Cars are like 2-liter Sodas

Two-liter sodas are meant for parties: to be consumed by lots of people on special occasions and in a short period of time. If you buy a 2-liter soda under other conditions, you usually end up drinking too much yourself or letting some go to waste.

Cars are like that. Despite the fact that we usually drive alone, and that we don’t drive 24, or even 12, and not even 6 hours a day, cars are only sold in the big gulp size. And so, we consume them too much in our efforts to get our money’s worth, and lots of our car’s value goes to waste.

Traditional carsharing lets some people consume just the amount of car they want. But small-minded documents (leases and insurance documents) make it illegal to share your own car with someone else for money, or to formally pay an individual to use their car.
If we want to have fewer cars in cities and towns, and fewer cars mined out of the ground, stored on our streets, and returned to landfills, we need to create the insurance and regulatory means by which this kind of just-right consumption is possible.

Ditto for sharing car rides, for which it is also illegal in most countries to pay for the driver’s time and effort in addition to defraying some of his car costs. A California start-up Spride Ride has found a legislator who is trying to address some of these problems, but it is one state, and even that bill isn’t going far enough.

Legislators and policy-makers around the world: realize that some people want single-sized servings of cars and rides – or maybe even the opportunity to buy a 6-pack of individual servings – but only some of us want the 2-liter bottle. And unless you think the government or big business can provide those individual car-servings in every geography and to every desiring population, you’d do best to get rid of those barriers so that some us can serve up our excess car capacity and sell it to our neighbors.

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Ride Sharing Advice for Cities & Others

Benefits

• Very fuel-efficient means of motorized transport (very high passenger miles to the gallon)


• Reduces congestion (time, excess fuel costs and emissions, reduced highway and road infrastructure)


• Reduces parking demand


• Leverages the existing investment in rolling stock(cars) paid for by people themselves, and existing road and parking infrastructure


• Solution to the very difficult problem of providing affordable high quality HOV/transit services in low density geographies.


• Can be implemented immediately.

Define ridesharing at state (and federal) level

A definition protects ridesharing, and makes sure that it is not confused with other transportation services that carry specific insurance, licensing, or zoning requirements. Here is one possibility that seems to capture the essential issues, adapted from SECTION 3. 10–4–707.5 (2), Colorado Revised Statutes

“Ridesharing” means the vehicular transportation of passengers traveling together with a commonality of route or destination (e.g. work, shopping, health, educational, religious, athletic, sports facilities, leisure, or any destinations) if the vehicle used in such transportation is not operated for profit by an entity primarily engaged in the transportation business and if no charge is made therefore other than that reasonably calculated to recover the direct and indirect costs of the “ridesharing” including, but not limited to, a reasonable incentive to encourage accommodation of the needs of the elderly or disabled. However, nothing in this subsection (2) shall be construed as excluding from this definition an arrangement by an employer engaged in the transportation business who provides "ridesharing arrangements" for its employees. The term includes ridesharing arrangements commonly known as carpools and vanpools.

Ensure no ambiguity in state car insurance requirements

• Make sure that state car insurance policies cover everyone in the car if trip meets ridesharing definition (already happening with most insurance policies but definition at federal level of ridesharing would make this reality more easily defensible if challenged).
• Protect companies that broker ridesharing from liability stemming from what happens on the ride between riders (driver and passengers).

Enable ridesharing to accommodate giving rides to elderly and disabled

• Allow for additional modest fees to incent driver (owner of vehicle) to offer ridesharing with the elderly or disabled up to $x per person/ride (could be included in the definition) and make sure that such fees are allowable under definition of ridesharing and do not abrogate “ridesharing” definitions in insurance policies.
• Protect these drivers from liability if elderly or disabled injured in ways not covered by their personal car insurance.

Make sure that tax incentives offered for commuter benefits include ridesharing

“Change Section 132(f) of the Federal tax code to include carpooling/ridesharing. This section enables employers to underwrite the cost of their employees' transit or vanpool commutes, up to $110 - and offset qualified parking expenses up to $215 - per employee, per month. These benefits are not considered taxable income for the employee, and employers may write off these costs as a transportation expense.

Alternatively, employer may allow employees to set aside pre-tax dollars to purchase transit passes, pay vanpool fares, and to cover qualified parking costs. Pre-tax set-asides are subject to the same monthly limits.”

• Make benefits for going in high occupancy vehicles (HOV) equal to that of traveling in single occupancy vehicles (SOV). i.e. the parking benefits should not exceed those allocated for transit, vanpool, or ride sharing. In fact, incentives should be reversed. [Better would be make parking ineligible for this program.]
• Best would be to make all ridesharng – not just for commutes -- costs to be tax deductible (with documention).
• Ridesharing expenses have traditionally not been included because of perceived lack of ability to monitor and provide proof that the ride was shared. Change laws tso that those who can provide third-party documentation that ride was shared and expenses incurred can also participate in the program, just like any other tax deduction requiring a receipt.

Support one ride-sharing program online

This is difficult for me to say, as a provider of an online ridesharing service (www.GoLoco.org), but I believe it is true. In order for ride sharing to be successful, it needs a critical mass of postings within a specific geographic area. Institutions, universities, “green” websites, cities, and states that promote “carpooling” and don’t tell you where to go are just not very helpful to prospective carpoolers. And promoting a large number of sites will just result in any one site not having very much traffic, again, a disservice to people who actually are trying to share rides.

So what can be done to preserve competition, allow for the best services to rise to the top, and still make sure that only one database/service is being promoted on any given website?

• Choose one provider based on some known standards: (ability to make end users happy; trust mechanisms, ability to transfer money, website ease of use, audit trail of shared rides, protection of privacy, ease of communications between travelers, successful matches, etc.) and give them the contract/right to be listed for 1-2 years.
• Be willing to change who you support based on transparent metrics. If another company is doing a better job, switch who you promote.
• Require that the database/service you do market is “scrapable” by other ride-sharing companies. i.e. rides posted into that database would be accessible by all ride-sharing companies and available for matches within their own databases.

This system gives the maximum benefit to people who want to share rides. They can choose services that suit their particular needs, or that have successful marketed themselves, and get access to the rides posted on the state or city-supported service.

Set-aside carpool parking locations

Ideally, we want the carpool parking spaces to be the most desirable ones (even more desirable than car-sharing parking spaces). Anyone who carpools – regardless of company used to match the service – should be able to park in these spaces. I envision this sort of like credit card companies. “Reserved, Carpools. Accepted: GoLoco, etc.” To get onto the sign, perhaps the company has to meet some standard. To park at the sign, drivers would have to put a print-out of their matched trip on their dashboard with date, time, etc. readable from someone outside the car. I don’t believe an attendant actually has to monitor who parks here on a regular basis, but the ability to “audit” and fine people who shouldn’t park there is now overt and possible.

Is this a double standard? Online the city, company needs to choose one company, but on the street, several are supported? This allows for competitors to play, and if the city hasn’t chosen the best provider, the best provider can succeed and rise to the top.


In some locations – park and ride lots for example – these signs might say “carpool parking only, until 9:30am.” This way, if no one is carpooling, these spaces are available after peak demand.

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Car Sharing Advice for Cities

(this post was originally written in 2006 for ecoplan.org)
How can and should a government support the development of Car Sharing Organizations (CSOs)? As I write this, I note that many things revolve around the major cost items of running the business.



1. Car insurance. Insurance is very difficult to obtain in this nascent industry since the insurers have no experience with the risk basis, and it is a major cost to the CSO. It took years of accumulating data to finally get our insurance rates down in line with reality. If the government (city? state?) could establish some kind of pool for just the catastrophic incidents, this is an important way in which insurance risk can be tiered, making insurance affordable.

2. Parking. Parking ranks right up there as one of the largest variable costs. CSOs compete with individual's costs of maintaining and parking their own vehicles. If private parking is available on-street (cheaply), this makes the CSO service relatively more expensive than owning your own car and parking it on-street for free or close to free. Likewise, the convenience of on-street parking can make car-sharing (or private ownership) that much more (less) appealing than the alternative parked deep in large garages. This can swing both ways in supporting or creating an additional hurdle depending on where (and price) of the residential housing stock.

My best advice here is: Offer up some parking spaces (municipal lots or on-street) for one year agreements to whichever car-sharing company wishes to bid on them. In the early years, you will likely have only one company bidding, and their bid will be close to zero $/month. As the business gets more established, and as competition enters the market, the value for specific parking spaces to specific companies will rise: the city will enjoy the additional revenue, and more than one company can compete in specific locations (especially if you can offer up more than one space in a location). This seems like the most fair way to both nurture a budding industry, as well as accommodate success and competition.

3. Marketing. This is very very dear to both starting and existing companies. The city has lots of resources to get the word out to residents at very low cost. Providing this ability, whether the area has one or many competing companies is critical, and keeps the costs of providing the service down. For example, on bus, subway adverts, or information mailed out to residents that renew vehicle registrations, etc. Again, please make sure to offer this service if there is only one company, and quickly accommodate the addition of other competitors as they arise.

4. Taxing, Zoning, Plating, Parking Permits. Zipcar operates in many cities, counties, and states across the US and now Canada (Toronto). Obstacles have included: residentially zoned neighborhoods where the inclusion of a car-share parking space could be construed as "business" and thus not allowable; a business tax applied on each and every parking location as if it were a separate "business establishment"; per transaction taxes meant for car rental that make the economics of hourly rental impossible (i.e. $10/rental tax ... if you rent for just a few hours that makes it economically unreasonable); are these vehicles plated commercial or residential? In Boston, commercial plates pay a higher rate at the toll booths, and get to park in loading zones. We would like to pay residential rates at the tolls and not be allowed to parking in loading zones... In any event, you can imagine how these can cause issues, some of which are easier to resolve than others.

5. Geographic carve-outs. If my memory from 3 years ago serves me, London offered up its support for carsharing on a borough by borough basis (?). I think this is problematic because, like most businesses, carsharing does best when it can scale. Also, users very much stand to gain from competition (improved quality of service) and a large network (i.e. a member can pick up a car from both work or home, without having to join two companies). Again, this is an easy issue to correct going forward."

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