Study: Car Sharing Reduces VMT Over Time

Research out of UC Berkeley shows that car sharing lowers all customers' vehicle mileage by about a quarter over time.

1 minute read

June 11, 2014, 1:00 PM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Steven T. Jones shares insight into research by Susan Shaheen of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at UC Berkeley. Shaheen’s research "has found that each shared car takes between nine and 13 other cars off the road, figures that she says are amazingly consistent around the world."

Moreover, when people adopt car sharing, they also decrease their use of cars, in general, over time: "the studies by Shaheen and other researchers show that VMT among car sharing customers drops in subsequent years, often quite dramatically, as people figure out that it’s not really so hard to get around by public transit, bike, or on foot."

Friday, May 23, 2014 in San Francisco Bay Guardian

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