Car Share

Vehicle sharing is a great option for getting around the city and doing the things we all need to do without having to own a car. Whether it's for running errands, visiting friends, hauling gear to a show, or catering a picnic, vehicle sharing services help give neighbors access to "just enough car" and help reduce car ownership and the pressure on parking spaces – that's good for household budgets and good for the city.

Providing on-street spaces for shared vehicles, whether they're cars or pickup trucks or electric mopeds, helps make shared vehicles attractive to use for more neighbors, while squeezing more utility out of our finite supply of curb.

Convenient vehicle sharing helps give people the flexibility to sell their car (or forego buying one). One of the key findings in the SFMTA's On-Street Car Sharing Pilot Program Evaluation Report (PDF) was that the average on-street shared vehicle in San Francisco is used by 19 different people each month, with some shared on-street vehicles used by 30 or 40 or 60 different neighbors.

Whether your trip involves hauling or shopping or tour-guiding, vehicle sharing can be a convenient and affordable way to get around the city.

Car Share Providers in San Francisco

Zipcar

Getaround

Truqit (24/7 self-service pickup trucks)

GIG

Vehicle Sharing Research

Vehicle sharing has been shown to reduce household vehicle ownership rates, parking demand, vehicle miles traveled, and greenhouse gas emissions. In combination with the SFMTA's efforts to better utilize transportation demand management strategies, ensure curb equity, improve efficiency in curb management, and make transit, walking, and bicycling more attractive, vehicle sharing plays a role in helping achieve these goals.

In addition to the SFMTA's own evaluation of its 2011 On-Street Car Share Pilot, the 2013 car share pilot was motivated and informed by research and analysis of urban car sharing prepared by Elliot Martin and Susan Shaheen of the UC Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center, as well as other researchers:

The Impact of Carsharing on Household Vehicle Ownership
Elliot Martin and Susan A. Shaheen, Access, UC Berkeley, Spring 2011

Impact of Carsharing on Household Vehicle Holdings – Results from North American Shared-Use Vehicle Survey
Elliot Martin, Susan A. Shaheen, and Jeffrey Lidicker, Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2143, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2010, pp. 150–158.

The Impact of Carsharing on Public Transit and Non-Motorized Travel: An Exploration of North American Carsharing Survey Data
Elliot Martin and Susan Shaheen, Energies, Basel, Switzerland, Nov 2011

Greenhouse Gas Emission Impacts of Carsharing in North America
Elliot W. Martin and Susan A. Shaheen, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vol. 12, No. 4, December 2011