Abstract

Growing concerns about petroleum dependence, greenhouse gas emissions, and traffic congestion make shared-use vehicle programs look increasingly attractive. They offer an alternative to car ownership that yields benefits to their members by lowering the cost of transportation and to society at-large by reducing per capita VMT and increasing the use of public transportation. While neighborhood carsharing programs have already received a lot of attention, station car programs, the other type of shared-use vehicle program, largely have not. In the station car approach, shared vehicles are based at public transportation terminals to â??extendâ?? the public transportation network. This paper analyzes responses to a survey of the users of UC-Irvineâ??s ZEV-NET research program, which employs battery electric vehicles and is managed using information technologies. We find that ZEV-NET users participate in the program because they like the flexibility, the ease of use, and the reliability of ZEV-NET vehicles. ZEV-NET commuters are also more concerned about travel stress, cost, and environmental impacts than those who drive alone. By contrast, the latter place greater value in flexibility, reliability, and to a lesser degree, time. Moreover, the demographic characteristics of ZEV-NET users are not statistically different from those of non-users. As ZEV-NET users are not much more concerned about environmental issues than non-users, just advertising the environmental impacts of this program would not be sufficient to grow ZEV-NET; instead, potential cost advantages should be emphasized. These findings should be useful for designing more station car programs that rely on zero-emitting vehicles.