Photo credit: Jaypeg @ flickr

Peer-to-peer (“P2P”) car-sharing is gathering some major mainstream steam in New England and the rest of the country. RelayRides, originally founded in Cambridge and now one of the major players in the P2P car-sharing space, has officially begun a partnership with General Motor’s OnStar service that will give millions of vehicle owners the ability to start making money off their vehicle in seconds. The new partnership has the potential to benefit not only the region’s environment, but also its economy and residents – cars owners and not, alike.

For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, P2P car-sharing works by providing a platform, usually a web-based car-sharing service, that connects renters with a short-term need for a vehicle directly to a vehicle owner willing to rent out their personal vehicle for a fee. In areas where it is available, P2P car-sharing provides financial benefits for all parties involved. Renters avoid the high costs of vehicle ownership while still having access to a vehicle for an hourly rate when needed. The car-sharing service collects a percentage of the vehicle owner’s rental revenue and gains access to a fleet of rental vehicles without incurring the huge capital costs involved in running a traditional car rental service. Meanwhile, vehicle owners can defray their own costs of ownership by collecting rental revenue during the time that their vehicle would otherwise sit unused.

In addition to being a potential boon for vehicle owners, the widespread adoption of P2P car-sharing could also have environmental benefits. A recent study by UC-Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center suggests that car-sharing reduces household vehicle ownership by both allowing households that own multiple vehicles to shed one or more and also deterring carless households from ever purchasing a vehicle. Environmental advocates hope that this reduction in household vehicle ownership will reduce the carbon footprint of transportation by resulting in a lower number of total vehicle miles traveled (“VMT”) and a decrease in traffic congestion.

The new RelayRides/OnStar partnership has the potential to take P2P car-sharing beyond the daydreams of ardent environmentalists. Having already invested an undisclosed sum in RelayRides’ early round venture financing, General Motors (“GM”) doubled down on their investment by giving RelayRides members integrated web-access to their network of nearly 6 million GM vehicles with active OnStar subscriptions. OnStar subscribers with an eligible GM vehicle will be able to sign up for RelayRides online through their OnStar account and allow members, with an approved reservation, to instantly unlock their vehicle using either a smartphone app or by replying to a text message.

The new web-access technology streamlines the P2P car-sharing experience, removing the need for renters and vehicle owners to arrange to meet in person and exchange keys. In addition, many OnStar equipped vehicles include theft-prevention technology that can block a vehicle’s ignition or force it to slow to a stop and theft recovery technology that includes pinpoint location through GPS. GM hopes the added security and convenience of the partnership will create an added incentive for subscription to or renewal of their OnStar service while RelayRides hopes the new technology will help differentiate it from competitors and increase membership.

As highlighted by the liability issues surrounding a fatal accident recently covered by the New York Times, there are still kinks to be worked out in the P2P car-sharing model. These include things like clarifying how car-sharing will be treated for insurance liability purposes.  Despite these uncertainties, the partnership between GM and RelayRides could be a major step towards bringing P2P car-sharing closer to mainstream acceptance. Clf is hopeful that support from one of the world’s largest automakers is a good sign both for the burgeoning P2P car-sharing market and the environment as a whole.

The other day I got an email from the folks at Zipcar asking for support from Zipcar members who live in Brookline MA to speak up regarding proposed revised zoning ordinances to encourage car sharing, and this note is to ask for your support of these updates. The proposed changes are “Warrant Articles” 12 and 13 on the November 2009 Town Meeting Warrant.  Here’s a quick overview prepared by Zipcar:

• A limited number of shared car parking locations will be permitted in all areas except those zoned for single family dwellings.
• A special permitting process would be available for those locations where member demand requires us to provide more than the number of spaces allowed under Article 13.

In response I sent the following email to members of Brookline Town Meeting:

Dear Town Meeting Members,

I am writing to you today in both my personal capacity as a Brookline resident and in my professional capacity, as a climate and environmental advocate, in order to urge you to vote in favor of Warrant Articles 12 and 13.

Almost ten years ago I had an opportunity to discuss the idea of car sharing with the founders of Zipcar just prior to the creation and launch of that enterprise. I urged them to press ahead with the concept and company and I joined shortly after the launch and have made heavy use of their services ever since. I can directly testify that the presence of Zipcar (particularly in Brookline Village) has allowed my family to manage with only one car. Car sharing reduces demand for parking, consumption of land by cars and traffic on the streets as cars are juggled among parking spaces. It supports and enhances public transportation use and activity in our commercial and residential centers (like Brookline Village, Coolidge Corner and Washington Square) and town policy should encourage and foster its expansion.

Zipcar started with a single green Volkswagen New Beetle in the Springfield Street municipal parking lot in Cambridge and its early expansion brought it naturally to Brookline. Through organic growth and merger it has now expanded across the continent (from California to Canada) and even across the Atlantic to London. We should be proud of the role that Brookline played in providing this good enterprise with a base for growth and should recognize that it continues to provide value to our residents and a benefit to the Town. The proposed Warrant Articles are reasonable measures that will facilitate this important community benefit – whether it is provided by Zipcar or another car sharing service.

Please let me know if I can provide you with any additional information or answer any questions on this, or any other, subject.

Seth Kaplan

I firmly believe in the value of car sharing (really, the wikipedia entry is quite good) as a tool for reducing car ownership and usage and for boosting transit use and helping build vital urban communities.

Some members of Brookline Town Meeting have suggested that they are concerned about noisy and disruptive college students traveling to and returning from cars stored in residential areas. This is a legitimate concern – but I would point out that Zipcar (and pretty much every operation of this sort) requires that members be at least 21 years of age and having shared cars in the neighborhood has the positive effect of providing local students (and recent grads) with an alternative that allows them to avoid owning a car that will clog up local streets.