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OCR for page 127
Car-Sharing: Where and How It Succeeds
members reported that "You have more money to spend on other things
[after joining car-sharing]." Another report was that "Now I can spend more
money on rent than on the car." One focus group member reported that "I
consider [the cost of car-sharing] a lot, but when I got my annual summary,
I had spent $1,100 last year on car-sharing, and somebody at work told me
that's less than I would pay for insurance if I owned a car."
We noted in Chapter 3 that a certain portion of car-sharing members could be
classified as "economizers." These would include at least some of the 82.3%
of the respondents who agreed or strongly agreed that "saving money is
very important to me." They generally do not own cars, have lower incomes,
and are younger than other car-sharing members. In our focus groups, these
persons were highly attuned to the costs of specific trips, and tended to base
their mode choices for specific trips, to a large extent, on cost.
4.5A Proposed Standard Methodology
Several car-sharing operators and partner organizations interviewed as part
of this research expressed a desire for a simple methodology that could be
consistently used to assess the local impacts of car-sharing in a given commu-
nity, and benchmark performance against other cities. This section proposes
a standard methodology that would fulfill this need. See Chapters 7 and
8 for a more general discussion of evaluation techniques and of potential
mechanisms to aggregate these data on a national scale.
The major considerations for this methodology are:
· Simplicity and conciseness. It is designed to be straightforward
to add on to any form of member communication, such as an
application form or market research effort, without the need for
a dedicated survey. Naturally, this does not preclude car-sharing
operators, their partners or independent researchers from adding
questions or supplementing them with other research techniques
such as travel diaries.
· Longitudinal. One of the major constraints of simple evaluation
surveys of car-sharing has been their reliance on self-reported
information for vehicle ownership and use for years past. This
makes it difficult to assess the extent of the impacts, particularly
if persons have been car-sharing members for several years. The
recommended methodology uses a longitudinal analysis similar
to the techniques used by I-GO in Chicago and the City of Alexan-
dria, VA.
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OCR for page 128
Chapter 4 · Impacts of Car-Sharing
The recommended questions are adapted from those used for the online
survey for this project, as follows:
· How many vehicles are owned or leased by you and members of
your household?
· On average, how many days a week do you drive alone to work
or school?
· Do you hold a monthly or annual transit pass?
· Approximately how many miles do you drive per year? (Include
miles in your own vehicle, plus those in borrowed, shared and
rental cars.)
· If car-sharing stopped, would you buy a car?
o Yes almost certainly
o Yes probably
o No probably not
o No almost certainly not
These questions should be included on both the membership application
form and on annual renewal materials. (If no annual renewal is necessary,
surveys should be distributed annually.) The responses should be included in
the operator's membership database. This approach has two advantages:
· It allows for longitudinal analysis, i.e. changes for individuals
to be tracked over time, and minimizes reliance on respondents'
memories or hypothetical responses. Note that some of the ques-
tions (such as number of days driving alone to work or school)
have little meaning if the survey is conducted as a single snapshot;
the value of the data lies in the ability to compare year-on-year
changes.
· It is likely to maximize response rates, since no separate survey
form needs to be returned.
· It allows responses to be linked with other membership data, if
desired, such as frequency of car-sharing use and residential or
workplace location.
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