With traffic congestion particularly on rainy days being very common in big cities throughout the world, the concept of car sharing seem to take off in a rather big way. The travel times during rush hours in many major cities around the world even reach two to three times of that required during non-rush times.
Another harmful effect of the bumper-to-bumper traffic jams is that these vehicles spew harmful emissions like carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide. With lesser traffic there are also lesser jams.
An interesting aspect of the car sharing schemes is the role of the motor industry, which are in the fore, experimenting it. According to Frost and Sullivan, each shared car on the road replaces ten cars.
The DriveNow scheme by BMW lets people to share its fleet of electronic cars at just about a quarter of the regular taxi costs. The advantage of BMW is that, it offers a glimpse and experience of their cars to people who are not yet ready to buy a car.
Second, it makes lives easier for those left on the road to consider investment in expensive cars. Cars can also find parking vacancies quicker without much waiting, which does well for the environment. It is therefore not a surprise that many car manufacturers are eying on car-sharing schemes. Daimler’s Car2go scheme is in operation in many cities around the world. The car rental firm Hertz also operates a car-sharing scheme too.
It must be noted here that Avis Budget is buying the car-sharing firm Zipcar for $500 million. The company predicts car-sharing members to increase more than car owners in major cities throughout the world.
With alternative forms of mobility and transport, it is only logical that these shared-services would only increase given the prediction that about seven in ten people would be in mega cities in the subsequent three or four decades.
It is without doubt that car-sharing is important in the interest of the society. With increasing number of vehicles on the road, there is more hectic and chaos apart from environmental concerns.
With car-buying made very easy, the number of car-owners is increasing rapidly. The society would soon have to confront this section and discourage car-buying. Discouragement and restrictions on private car-ownership and car-use could soon be in place, once environmental and social concerns reach extraordinary levels.
Even if cars with battery and low emissions are introduced in a big way, car owners would soon be forced to bear the infrastructural development costs, in a major way.
If one car-owner can forgo his car for a shared-car, why can’t all car-owners?. The car manufacturers could have initiated car-sharing, with a sense of corporate responsibility too. However, as car-sharing takes off now, does private car use do well for the society?. The society and its law makers would soon be confronted with a need to ban private car use.
