Sydney Urbanites Leads in Car-Sharing
Sydney is one of the world’s most car-sharing friendly cities, according to a new report that suggests up to 10,000 fewer cars are being driven within the CBD bounds with those cars replaced by less than a thousand car-sharing vehicles.
Sydney leads transport hubs like Boston and San Francisco in the rollout and effectiveness of car-sharing, according to a new report from AECOM commissioned by the International Carsharing Association and shared with the Committee for Sydney. The city has embraced sharing in a number of different forms, says the report, including in everything from temporary ride-sharing through services like Uber and Sydney Airport collaborating on short-term pickup zones to the city’s acceptance and encouraging of private operators like GoGet in rolling out car-sharing pods in dense and high-traffic areas of the CBD.
GoGet is Australia’s largest car-sharing service and has 2200 vehicles across the country and 66,000 users, both figures that are apparently growing 40 per cent year on year. In the City of Sydney region alone, 20,000 users — 15 per cent of the population of the area — access over 800 GoGet cars, 162 of which are parked in off-street locations that a single private-owned car would otherwise occupy.
Well over half of Sydney’s population don’t need a car to get to work, according to the report, with almost 30 per cent using public transport and a quarter travelling on foot.
Users of car-sharing, too, travel around 2000 vehicle kilometres less each year, which reduces on-road congestion and pollution — at around 1500km of car-sharing journeys on average versus 3525km for private owners. With the average cost of owning a private car sitting at over $5000 per year (according to a NRMA 2014 operating cost report), car sharing could pay for itself if a user takes fewer than 6 trips per week. Car-sharing has contributed to City of Sydney residents travelling 37 million fewer kilometres per year.
Source: Sydney Is A World Leader In Car-Sharing
