Car sharing can reduce the amount of cars with 90 percent

Photo: Walter Baxter

Last fall at the Shareable Cities Summit in Portland a panelist from Getaround, the car sharing service, made the astounding statement that car sharing had the potential to reduce the number of cars on the road by an order of magnitude--for the math-impaired that means 90 percent.

What makes this seemingly fantastical development possible is the fact the cars sit parked 95 percent of the time according to Donald Shoup, a UCLA professor of urban planning who has made a specialty of researching parking. (This fact has had a huge impact on the urban landscape. But that's a subject for another time.)

Our primary task must be to reduce drastically the amount of resources we use in our daily lives. The first step in doing that is to recognize that it is not goods which we seek, but the services they provide. The shareable economy in all its forms--outright sharing, libraries of tools and other items, renting from neighbors--offers a way to reduce considerably our resource use by giving people access to all manner of things and the services they provide without having to buy something new. - Kurt Cobb

A comment to the article by andyuk:

cars are, with air travel the two biggest unnecessary wasters of oil and causes of climate change. its time to ban frivolous car ownership and air travel while there's still a small time to transition to alternatives. 90% of private car journeys, for 90% of people are either unnecessary or could be done via public transport, cycling or walking. concessions could be made for those that live in rural areas or small business that absolutely need them but localising work will solve most of the issue of people needing vans for work. but its true to say that the car for the vast majority of people is a fashion statement or a drug rather than a necessity.