Partnering with cities for more impactful carsharing
In October 2020, the deputy mayor of Paris announced the city’s ambition to get rid of 70,000 of the 140,000 parking spots on the streets of Paris, reclaiming approximately 65 hectares of space. It’s a bold move that makes a strong statement: cars should no longer dominate our city streets.
The sentiment of the goal is absolutely right, but it would be too simplistic to believe that we need to get rid of all cars completely. There’s a way to achieve the goal of bringing fresh air to cities and freeing up more public space while still providing people with the convenience of cars.
Cars aren’t the problem — too many private cars are
One of the biggest challenges facing cities today is the overwhelming amount of space taken up by private vehicles — cars owned by individuals are used only 5% of the time and remain parked the other 95%, taking up valuable street space in already heavily congested areas.
But many people still rely on cars, either in their daily lives or occasionally. A car affords a level of convenience, flexibility, and reliability that can’t be completely replaced by mass transportation options like trains, or smaller vehicles like bicycles.
The solution, therefore, isn’t to get rid of cars completely — but to replace idle private cars with highly-used shared ones.
Cities that want to convince its citizens to give up their private cars need to be able to offer them a viable alternative: a highly visible carsharing service supported with thousands of on-street parking stations all over the city.
Users love dedicated parking spaces
At the end of 2018, Paris launched the Mobilib’ program, which allocated on-street parking spots around the city to four operators of roundtrip carsharing services, including Getaround. While the average private car is used only 5% of the time, the average Getaround car with a dedicated Mobilib’ parking space is used more than 65% of the time!
The high occupancy rate of these Getaround Connect cars — technology-equipped cars that can be unlocked via smartphone — shows that customers prefer to book these cars over others.
Several benefits make these Mobilib’ cars more appealing:
- On-demand 24/7 street access via smartphone, without the hassle of going to an agency or transportation hub like an airport or train station
- A guaranteed parking spot for their return
- The possibility of shorter trip durations, starting from just 1 hour
For a carsharing user, renting a Getaround Connect car with its own parking space on the street feels as easy and convenient as renting a shared bicycle or electric kick-scooter: “If I see it, I can rent it.” They only need to book the car on the app, then unlock the car with their phone — and off they go. No time or effort wasted.
The advantage for cities
The very presence of these dedicated parking stations on city streets serves as a constant reminder to the community at large that carsharing is a viable option for transportation. In fact, more than 30% of carsharing users first learned about the concept by seeing a parking station dedicated to carsharing on their street. For certain use-cases — such as going to the suburbs or travelling with bulky items — having access to a car on the street becomes the most convenient mobility solution.
The more evident it becomes that the city supports carsharing (by initiatives such as increasing the Mobilib’ program), the more people will consider sharing cars rather than needing to own one. Carsharing is no longer a far-fetched concept: it’s a reality that’s becoming as ubiquitous as shared bikes and scooters.
Carsharing in Paris, Brussels, and beyond
Like Paris, Brussels is also looking to improve the quality of life of its citizens by encouraging carsharing. The municipality recently awarded Getaround with a five-year tender for 24 parking spots in high-traffic areas within the Pentagon in the city centre.
With 186 total carsharing stations slated by the end of the year, the city is betting on carsharing as a greener mobility solution that will help citizens decide to give up their own cars.
As of today, the Getaround platform boasts almost 4,000 shared, connected cars of all types in the Ile-de-France region — the largest fleet of connected vehicles in Europe. But only 150 of those cars have a dedicated Mobilib’ parking space in Paris. It will take thousands of shared cars with dedicated parking spots to have meaningful impact on citizens.
On the Paris proposal to eliminate 70,000 parking spaces, even allocating just 10 or 15% of those spots to carsharing would help to create a Parisian mobility service large and convenient enough to encourage thousands more Parisians to give up their private cars.
The city of Marseille is allocating more parking spots to Getaround Connect cars, and partnerships are ongoing with smaller municipalities in Ile-de-France and around Europe. Carsharing is a great solution for large metropolises and smaller communes alike, at virtually no cost to the cities themselves.
The next step for real change
For carsharing to become a truly viable mobility solution in the coming years, it needs to become part of the city landscape and stay ingrained in the minds of citizens — shared cars parked in dedicated spots on the street would do just that.
If you’re involved in local government or mobility and want your city to make the switch to carsharing, supported with on-street parking stations, get in touch with us at eu.cities@getaround.com so we can work together to make it happen.
Do you want to contribute to making cities better places to live? Check out our open positions to join us.
