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The Commons and Carsharing
The subsequent development of this Web site and the other associated activities that are set out here are thus far being solely funded and supported by EcoPlan and The Commons. We are however looking very hard for additional funding and support for what we regard to be a timely and important public service activity. If you have any ideas for us, don't be shy. We need to hear from you.
Our intention here has been to create an open, public World Wide Web site which in a first instance will offer a comprehensive international survey of car sharing projects and programs, world wide. This site intends to provide a convenient place both to gather and to share information on a wide variety of car sharing projects and approaches around the world, past, present and planned future, and to make this freely available in turn to all comers. We are hoping both to inventory and to understand these projects, not only in terms of their basic organizational and mechanical aspects, but also in terms of their social, economic, environmental, and life quality aspirations and accomplishments. The Web, together with a certain number of associated tools, is being used in this case as a sort of pedagogic tool, and more specifically as a group learning mechanism. Think of it as "CarSharing U" (university), with possibly the advantage of being as close to free as we today being about $35,000.00 per head. Now $35,000.00, together with a little good will and application, can go a long way on the Web.)
Ambitious as that may sound, our ultimate objective stretches considerably beyond that, since we are also hopeful that the work under this program will serve to simulate, support and reinforce experimentation in this socially, economically and environmentally important area in many places around the world. You may care to think of this as a growing collection of tools and materials for people and groups who wish to put these technologies to work.
The site also provides a number of working tools for communication, information sharing and interaction, one of which is The Consortium Hotline which you will spot immediately to your left. You may care to think of the Hotline as our mail room; it is here where incoming information and materials are first filed for all to see and use. It is here where the collaboration starts. (For more detail on the Communications Component, click here.)
It is our intention to develop all these materials in close cooperation with the many existing projects and sources of expertise, including those available on or through the Web, with the goal of adding to and not just meaninglessly duplicating information and insight which is available elsewhere. It is our view that many hands and points of view are needed if these projects are to develop as they could and should.
In addition to the Web site, we are steadily generating new tools and activities to support developments in this area world wide. The first of these was the 1998 Casebook, followed by the special edition of the Journal of World Transport Policy and Practice which is entirely devoted to this topic. This program continues/
A further ambition of the program behind this site is to contribute to the identification and stimulation of public/private partnerships and cooperation in this general area. This turns out to be slightly tricky since most of the activity which has taken place along these lines over the years has been based on volunteers and non-profits. And while there is no doubt that we will be seeing a lot of such activities in the future as well, we feel strongly that there is both room and opportunity for strategic public/private collaboration in many places. Indeed, we can expect to see forms of ownership and service delivery that will be hard to place for anyone who insists on sticking with the old public/private dichotomy.
Stay tuned to this site for news on all this.
At the time, we saw car sharing as one of many alternative transportation approaches that we felt deserved more attention and support (albeit certainly not among the most promising at the time). Our first report on this topic was in a volume entitled PubliCars that was carried out in 1976 for the US Department of Transportation. We have continued to monitor progress in these developments ever since, and the present effort is seen as a timely update which will build on these deeper historical and international background.
Carsharing and the World Transport program
The original research work in the field behind this project was undertaken by a small team under the direction of Eric Britton at EcoPlan in 1973 (that's right, 1973) as part of a world survey on non-conventional transportation concepts, at which time carsharing was identified as one of approximately two hundred less conventional systems and approaches. The first stage of research under this latest program (Jan/May 1998) was in part funded by and intended to support the UTOPIA research program of the European Commissions, DG VII. that update was carried out under the joint direction of Eric Britton of EcoPlan and Robert Ayres of CMER/INSEAD (the environmental research unit of the European Business School). (Further background on the initially concerned groups and agencies will be found via the links directly to your left.)
Behind this ProjectObjective of The World CarShare Consortium
Our group has been observing, researching and on working as consultants and advisers to innovative transportation projects programs since the late-sixties. After half a decade of concentration on new technology systems and developments, our original work in this particular area was in the context of a multi-part international survey of so-called "paratransit" projects and arrangements (paratransit being a word that was coined at the time to cover all those myriad possible transportation arrangements between "normal" private car use and "conventional" bus and rail public transport), which stretched over half a dozen years and as many publications.
Our Background in Car Sharing
The work on carsharing is part of a greater whole, which you are invited to review at the World Transport site which you can reach directly from here.
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