How to Put this Tool into Action in Your
Community:
Implementation Techniques
Expanding an
existing car sharing effort.
Just because your
area has a car sharing organization already
doesn’t mean it has anywhere near scratched the
surface of its potential. To expand an existing
organization to meet your community's needs,
first meet with the organization and talk to
them about your ideas for expansion. Other ideas
to help integrate car sharing more thoroughly
into your community include:
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Asking developers
to provide car-sharing in new developments
and reduce the amount of parking
accordingly, and asking the Planning
Commission to require this and provide the
necessary incentives (e.g. more flexible
parking requirements). |
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Asking businesses
and individuals to join – maybe include
car-sharing as part of an employer TDM
program. |
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Asking business
parks, university campuses, etc. to
provide car-sharing for their employees. |
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Asking transit
agencies and cities to provide car-sharing
at stations, and bus hubs, in municipal
parking facilities and on-street. |
Starting from scratch.
A car sharing effort could have thousands of
members, or just a handful. In many cases, more
informal car-sharing programs (e.g. among a
group of friends or neighbors, or in an
apartment building) might be a better
alternative where there is less of a market
(e.g. in a small community where car-sharing
might not be able to break even). It is okay to
start small if you don't have the ability to go
big! The rest of this section will discuss the
challenges of setting up a more formal car
sharing organization.
Let’s get started! The number of
car sharing programs in the United States is
growing rapidly, and starting such an
organization in your community could encourage
less traffic congestion, cleaner air, and
increased use of transit, bicycling, and walking
where you live by giving people the option to
drive less frequently (or not at all). If you
feel that your community could benefit from a
car-sharing program, you and your group can work
to get one started. Be aware that starting a car
sharing program can be a time-consuming project,
so before beginning to plan on how to start a
new program, make sure to find out if there are
any active (or former) plans for car sharing
programs already moving forward for your area.
If there are no
proposals to start a new car sharing
organization in your community, you may want to
contact one of the three established car sharing
organizations to sell them on coming to your
area. FlexCar and ZipCar are the leading
for-profit organization and
City CarShare is the leading
non-profit organization. The steps suggested
below will help you in your efforts to start
one. (For more resources on starting a car
sharing organization, see the resources in
Toolkit
Links or contact the car sharing
organizations in the Internet
Resources (both in the
‘Dig a Little Deeper’ section) as well as the
people leading car sharing organizations listed
in the ‘Who You Gonna Call?’ section.
Get your
plan together. Start by asking: What are
short-term and long-term goals? What is the
service area (i.e. the geographic area that the
car sharing program will be able to conveniently
serve)? What is the business model (i.e.,
non-profit, for-profit, or co-operative)? How
can you partner with any of the existing car
sharing organizations in order to build off
their expertise? You can get advice on how to
write an organizational/business plan for your
car sharing organization from the
US Small Business Administration’s Business Plan
Basics website or the online article So
You Wanna Write a Business Plan?. Resources
and advice for starting a non-profit are
available from the
Center for Non-Profit Management.
Recruit local leaders. Select a
management team of at least three people who
are committed to the concept of car sharing and
have experience in transportation policy or
planning. The three essential positions are
usually the Executive Director (aka Chief
Executive Officer in a for-profit organization),
a Director of Operations & Finance (aka Chief
Operating Officer and/or Chief Financial
Officer), and a Director of Member Services &
Community Outreach (aka Customer Service
Director and/or Director of Public
Relations/Marketing). In addition, you’ll want
to select a
board of directors to provide oversight and
guidance to the organization. Members of the
board of directors should have some expertise in
a field related to car sharing and/or should be
closely involved in the communities that the car
sharing program is intended to serve.
Create
partnerships. Identify strategic
partners in your community and get them involved
in the planning process as early as possible.
Examples of potential partners are: transit
providers, transit advocacy organizations, car
rental agencies, automakers (particularly in
California, as they may be interested in
complying with the state’s
Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) mandate), and
housing developers (because hosting a car
sharing pick-up location at their development
may allow them to build fewer parking spaces;
see sidebar Car
sharing helps developers create more affordable
housing for more information).
Define a realistic time table. You
should expect the planning process to last a
minimum of 6 months, and potentially much longer
(planning being the time from when you begin
writing your business plan to the moment the
first member of your organization books a car
share vehicle and drives it for the first time
in your community). Suggestions on developing a
realistic
project schedule are available online.
Tackle the
biggest challenges. Typically, car share
organizations report that their major challenges
are accessing start-up capital, finding
locations for parking car share vehicles, and
insuring the vehicles. Some suggestions to
overcome of these challenges are listed below
(for additional advice on these topics, you can
also contact the car sharing organizations
listed in Internet
Resources in the ‘Dig
a Little Deeper’ section as well as the
people leading car sharing organizations listed
in the ‘Who You Gonna Call?’ section).
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Accessing
start-up capital. Finding and
securing start-up capital has been
identified by many existing car sharing
organizations as the greatest obstacle
they faced in the beginning (because the
start-up costs of car sharing programs are
significant, seed money is almost always
necessary). Your first step in getting
start-up funding will be to accurately
calculate what your start-up costs will be
and create a budget. Then you can begin to
seek funding from private investors,
government agencies and non-profit
foundations. For more information on
estimating your initial costs and how to
access start-up capital, see the
‘Show Me the Money!’ section. |
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Identifying
convenient parking locations. Try to work
with local businesses and government
agencies to secure appropriate and
convenient parking locations. The parking
area should be secure but also accessible
to car share members 24 hours a day. Many
large businesses (such as grocery stores)
or publicly-owned garages will likely have
a few extra spaces that they could make
available to car sharing vehicles either
for free or for reasonable cost
(especially if the proposal is pitched to
them as a way for them to reduce parking
demand from individually-owned vehicles
while at the same time generating positive
publicity for their business or agency). |
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Insuring car
sharing vehicles. You should
thoroughly research insurance options and
try to identify the most cost effective
option, as insurance prices are often one
of the greatest expenses for car sharing
programs and some car share organizations
have reported difficulty obtaining
insurance. Talk to other car sharing
programs which operate on a similar model
and to find out which insurance companies
gave them the best quotes and had the best
customer service. It should be noted that,
the lowest cost insurer is not always the
best choice for a car sharing
organization, especially if the company
does not seem to understand the car
sharing concept and/or seems unresponsive
to the unique insurance needs of a car
sharing program. |
Identify your target markets. In
2003, UC Berkeley researchers discover that the
demographic/lifestyle groups that have the
highest rates of participation in car sharing
programs are younger people (25-35 years old),
whites, women, and those holding professional
are management jobs. by learning how to identify
the target markets for
car sharing in your community, you can
tailor your rates, locations, and even the style
of vehicles you offer (as well as your marketing
efforts, discussed below) to the types of people
most likely to respond to the concept of car
sharing.
Market
yourself. Develop a means of
branding your car sharing program so that it
will appeal to the target markets you have
selected as well as other core user groups (such
as environmentalists and alternative
transportation advocates). Some tips for
successful marketing include:
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Develop a
catchy name,
slogan, and
logo for your organization. Be
creative, but make sure that each of these
is as simple and self-explanatory as
possible. |
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Develop a
promotional strategy. Essential
promotional steps include placing your
name and logo on the side of each car
share vehicle in your fleet and creating
printed brochures and a web site. |
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Contact the
environment and/or transportation
reporters at local media organizations and
ask them to write an article about your
program. When you launch your
organization, you should hold a
press conference and invite local
media, elected officials, and community
leaders to attend. You can also write a
press release to announce recent news
or new initiatives (like the opening of a
new car sharing location, surpassing the
1,000-member mark, or how many fewer cars
are on local roads because of car
sharing). |
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If you have
the resources, consider doing print,
radio, local TV, or outdoor paid
advertising. If you don’t have the
resources for a paid ad campaign, find a
local advertising agency that does pro
bono ad work for
community groups and see if they might
be willing develop a campaign for your
group for free. Then approach
media outlets and ask them to run your
ads for free or at a reduced rate. |
Secrets of success.
The following items are a few of the ‘secrets of success’ that emerged from the
experience of existing car sharing organizations.
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A critical
mass of at least 30 members is typically
needed to keep even the smallest car
sharing programs operational. Achieving
this membership threshold at the beginning
of the organization will require extensive
outreach and marketing. Good places to
recruit both volunteers and potential
members are at environmental- and
transportation-related conferences, fairs,
and forums. |
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Overhead
costs for vehicle management,
reservations, and billing can be
significant, so innovations that reduce
these costs can help make car sharing more
financially feasible and thereby help keep
user charges as low as possible. |
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Car sharing
programs may need sustained political
and/or financial support from both the
private- and public-sector to reach their
environmental, economical, and social
goals.
Case studies of car sharing programs
in San Francisco and Amsterdam have
indicated that the level of success that a
car sharing achieves in your community
will likely be proportional to the level
of external support it receives. |
  
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