Why does The Commons support a concept that may to some appear to be so off-beat and marginal as carsharing? Simple! We think it's a great, sustainable, practical mobility idea whose time has come and whose potential impact is quite simply huge. Carsharing: the missing link in your city's sustainable transport system.

Once mainly isolated local projects doing their best to survive under tough conditions, the institutions concerned with carsharing -- CSOs, local government, entrepreneurs, other transporters, public interest groups - are consolidating and now reaching out. Think that this is still a marginal phenomenon involving a few ragged Greens here and there? Check out this listing to see where you can get a shared car in close to 600 cities world wide. Carsharing? It's already here.

The broader context of World Carshare development and expansion

Carsharing is not an isolated commercial or neighborhood activity. It is part of a much greater whole, and to fully understand its prospects for the future -- and the challenge that need to be met by any successful operation -- it is necessary to have command of this bigger picture as well. Here is one good path to get you started.

The New Mobility Agenda
The World CarShare Consortium is a self-contained program with strong importance as one component of the cluster of inter-related, synergistic programs under our New Mobility Agenda. The leading edge of thinking and practice in the transport field has moved a long way over the last years, and a successful carsharing project must take this into account. The New Mobility Agenda is one good way to get a feel for the important developments that are reshaping the broader policy environment behind carsharing.

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The New Mobility Advisory/Briefs
Initiated in mid-2006 the Briefs have taken strategic carshare organization as one of the first challenges. The target is specifically to help mayor and city administrators better understand what it is that they need to ask of carshare operators in their community. And what they need to be prepared to understand and do in turn to help this new form of sustainable transport partnership to succeed. And support for better and more carsharing is right at the top of the list. The first Brief on carsharing will appear in the first quarter of 2007. Check it out here.

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Accelerated Learning Sessions
Two day Master Classes which bring city decisions makers, administrators and their senior staffs and advisors, face to face with some of the leading carshare operators and authorities, to explore together how these partnerships can be made to succeed. The first sessions are scheduled for Europe in March 2007. Others currently under discussion in other parts of the world.

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Kyoto World Cities 20/20 Challenge
This Emergency Program has set out to create a international expert platform in an attempt to encourage cities around the world to start to look at new mobility ideas and new solutions at a time when the old ones are no longer doing the job. This wide-open international collaborative program is being created to take direct aim at this challenge -- in cooperation with other programs and agencies whose reach and main competence is related but not quite identical. And carsharing is definitely an important part of the solution.

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The Commons: Open Society Sustainability Initiative
A shared public space on the Internet, providing a wide open, world-wide, non-government forum with working tools and assembly areas for people and groups concerned with improving our understanding and control of technology as it impacts on people in their daily lives. The bottom line: sustainable development and social justice. The tools

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