Having a car without the hassle of owning one

Korea is starting to see a growing trend that could change the way people view public transportation and personal vehicles.

Carsharing, an idea that began in Europe beginning in the 1980s and took the U.S. by storm in the late 90s, blurs the line between the two.

Carsharing is a vehicle coop system where members borrow cars on an hourly basis, offering more convenience than transportation at a cheaper cost than owning a car.

Korea Carsharing is bringing the idea to Korea, where most people utilize public transportation, and owning a car is seen as a measure of social status.

Rhee Jong-tae, Dean of Office of Research & Innovation at Dongguk University, first kicked off Korea Carsharing in Incheon’s Songdo International Business District last May.

Now Rhee, Korea Carsharing’s chief, decided to venture into Seoul, notorious for its traffic jams, by bringing the system to his campus.

To use one of the vehicles, faculty members simply need to reserve timeslots online before accessing the keyless vehicle with their id cards. For Rhee the only issue is that he can’t seem to provide enough cars.

Traditionally, carsharing systems have multiple drop-off locations throughout an area that allows users to borrow from one and return at another.

“The faculty have shown great participation towards the program, they are actually fighting over appointments and we are in a scenario where we don’t seem to have enough cars to go around,” said Rhee.

Among the handful of carsharing programs in Seoul, it was no mistake that Rhee started his campaign on a university campus, using its own patented location verification technology.

“The characteristic of a university is that they are very accepting of new technology and ideas,” he said, citing that the idea of carsharing sprouted from universities in other countries as well.

And the trial program for the faculty has caught the eye of students, who have already begun asking when the cars will be available to them, which is exactly what Rhee had hoped for.

“The carsharing system on campus is simply to expose the students to the idea of borrowing within the community, so when students graduate they sign up for such systems and share without a second thought.”

“Carsharing will change people’s perspective toward cars from something we consume and gloat about, to something we borrow and lend as part of a coop,” he said.

But Rhee is not in it for the money. He is pushing the idea because he believes in the program’s economic and environmental benefits.

In the U.S. and other developed countries, carsharing firms have marketed the system as a way to rid households of their second car, which usually spends more time providing a warm home to spiders than speeding down roads.

A recent study by the University of California’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center, found that the fuel economy of the most popular carsharing vehicles is 4.4 kilometers per liter more efficient than the average vehicle discarded.

The research also found that families often ditch their second car, and even their first.

“Carsharing members reduced their average vehicles per household from 0.47 to 0.24, a statistically significant shift, and most of this shift in ownership came form one-car households giving up their only car.”

Rhee thinks the same thing could happen in Korea.

“It is found that a lot of Korean people don’t actually want to purchase a car but do so out of convenience, there are a lot of places in Seoul that are simply too difficult to reach through public transportation,” said Rhee.

The UC Berkeley research last year also found that the number of cars on the road actually decreased with the introduction of carsharing.

“Carsharing has taken between 90,000 to 130,000 vehicles off North American roads. With roughly 10,000 carsharing vehicles deployed by organizations across the continent, this translates to about 9-13 vehicles removed for every carsharing vehicle.

But Rhee believes that is only the beginning for Korea, as he predicts numbers reaching “at least 20 vehicles per carsharing vehicle.”

Other early research found that the system saves time for users as well, reducing pollution.

“While the leasing of subcompact cars is providing significant personal benefits in the form of travel-time savings, in general this does not appear to be at the expense of high social-environmental costs,” according to the study.

The study was one of the earlier studies into the program by Robert Cervero, professor of city and regional planning at University of California Berkeley.

The most recent data from the U.S. university shows that as of July this year, 26 U.S. carsharing programs have roughly 560,000 members sharing 10,000 vehicles.

Emerging support

Other organizations throughout the country are jumping on the green technology, including local governments.

The Ministry of Knowledge Economy is currently accepting bids from contractors in an effort to provide electric vehicles to the public. According to the ministry they plan to select a contractor with the year, and provide a trial service by July of next year.

The ministry is also working closely with the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Gyeonggi Provincial Government.

Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, also plans to run a trial carsharing system starting January, in order to reduce traffic congestion, dependency on oil and pollution.

The city will have a total of 10 stations and some 30 vehicles including five electric vehicles.

But the efforts at home are much too slow according to Rhee.

“It doesn’t make sense that a country without a single drop of oil is among the last to implement a system that developed countries with flowing oil have long since started.”

Carsharing programs first started in Switzerland in 1987 and Germany in 1988, where members were given keys to a single lockbox that contained the actual vehicle key.

In the U.S. even companies have looked to similar programs to increase efficiency from its workforce. The best known example is Google which offers Gfleet, a carsharing program for its employees.

By Robert Lee (robert@heraldcorp.com)