World Streets Annual New Mobility Country Reviews Nuova Mobilità reports on carsharing in Italy

As you are seeing in the other country reports in this series, the state of carsharing in 2010 is very much a different story in different places. To get a feel for the status of carsharing in Italy today, check out the latest article from our sister publication Nuova Mobilità, along with a choice: either the original article as it appears in Italian, or a machine translation into workable if not quite perfect English. Take your pick.

Carsharing In Italy - 2010

* The original article in Italian under the title "L'intervento: il car sharing in Italia" is available here.

* And here below you have the (almost) untouched machine translation of the original via Google Translate:

Today Tiziano Schiavon, commercial director of City Car Club, a carsharing service in Turin, describes from his point of view the present status of carsharing in Italy.

In Italy today there are 36 million cars running on our roads; and it is estimated that 30% of all journeys involve distances of less than three kilometers. Just consider that an average of five million car trips are made to accompany children to school, although 86% of students live within one quarter of an hour by foot.

To counter the negative impact of traffic on the environment, Italy has introduced car sharing, a service of "public transport to individual use," which represents a concrete alternative to the car ownership, because you can only buy the use of the medium, rather than the medium itself.

The Ministerial Decree of 27/03/1998 has, among other measures, entrusted to local authorities the task of creating car sharing services: the following Memorandum of Understanding in January 2000, signed between the Ministry of Environment and the municipalities that joined the Initiative, sanctioned the establishment of a national program aimed at ensuring a coordinated management of all local services car sharing.

Municipalities constituted I.C.S. (Initiative Car Sharing): Italian carsharing is structured in a national circuit, coordinated by the ICS, which provides assistance to the institutions concerned. The participation of the latter is through joint ventures, in partnership with the local transport companies and / or business entities.

Developed using advanced technologies, the circuit ICS stands for the ability to use the service, with identical mode, even in common other than their inclusion. Parties are active in 2002, carsharing ICS is now active in Turin, Biella, Milan, Brescia, Genoa, Savona, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Parma, Modena, Rome and Palermo, which will follow shortly other experiences. Bolzano has a carsharing operation that is not part of the national circuit. The various local managers follow the standard ICS package: use the same technology, with guaranteed minimum quality and procedures.

Basic statistics: (City, Operators, Cars, Parking, number users.)


Notes
Note the relationship between cars and people: 1:25 in a nation where the average is about two car every three inhabitants: aged, babies, blind and disabled included. Many of carshare users have given up the first family car.

Characteristics Of Italian Carsharing

Subscribers can reserve (24/24) for any parked car, indicating time of pick-up and time of arrival. The parked car is opened by pressing the special ID card to the windshield. Throughout the booking - which may vary from one per hour to one or more consecutive days - you use the carsharing vehicle as a regular car that can go anywhere (in the city and out of town) and time of delivery should be located where the parking was taken.

But how much does this cost? The cost of subscription is added the cost of use (for each race, and depending on the model), calculated by adding a share to a kilometer per hour. Rates vary depending on the city in which case the inscription on average for a typical urban ride (two hours for 10 km) would cost about 10 Euro. Including VAT and fuel! A nice savings for those who, for example, has a small car with which runs 5000 kilometers per year: Shifting to carsharing has the opportunity to save about € 1,800 (or 30% of the cost of ownership).

But the benefits do not end there: carshare vehicles do not pay for parking in blue zones, have free access to the ZTL, lanes and paths to be confidential and be used even if the restrictions the movement (all these concessions may vary depending on municipalities so for more information consult the sites of individual managers). In some cities - such as Turin, Bologna and Genoa - also offer van sharing, for the transport of goods. Many operators also offer special rates for weekend or longer holiday periods.

Italians like Carsharing

Carsharing I.C.S. now has attracted 15,000 subscribers, using 570 vehicles distributed in 380 car parking places: numbers in a consolidated service, constantly growing, which is gradually integrating with the habits of personal mobility. In this context, it distinguishes the experience of Turin, which provides its 2350 members with 124 vehicles, distributed in 85 places: a quantitative and qualitative measurement of a carsharing that works is this, that the facilities made available to subscribers. The Turin experience is increasing in the major towns of the province, but also in other capitals in the region, with the project of Biella and the - probable - of Alexandria.

Returning to the national perspective, who are the users? Typically 'a male (62%), between 25 and 54 year old employee, 60% of whom live in ZTL or the Blue Zone is an occasional driver who uses the car during free time, thanks to carsharing has abandoned the family car (63%), and increasingly uses of public transportation (74%). Important numbers that determine a reduction of about 7,000 cars circulating in urban areas: in miles, the average annual fall is estimated at around 27%, with an annual saving of about 34,000,000 miles. In environmental terms are thus reduce about 7,000 tons of CO2 and 3.7 tons of PM10 per year.

Summary of Carsharing: An Intelligent Solution

In terms of economic and managerial carsharing service is a high risk industry, which requires considerable investment and an organized structure and specialization. Its survival is closely related to rapid growth in sales (in which the start-up is the most critical moment). All aspects that determine the weak entrepreneurial spirit that surrounds the initiative, forcing several operators to true economic equilibrium.

Carsharing is not yet covered by the Italian Highway Code, with consequences on frequent squatting spaces reserved for the service. It should be still considered the strong divide between the propensities of citizens and the subsequent actual behavior, demonstrating the poor attitude of the "people car" to "contamination" modal.

Carsharing, along with other measures do not individually decisive, is an important solution to reduce pollution, offering increased mobility choices for people without cars or they rationalize their use for occasional travel.

Carsharing encourages the development of competition between different modes of transport, thus increasing the use of public transport. Obviously the carsharing leads to reduction in the number of cars in circulation, increasing the free parking in city (one car in carsharing replaces 10/12 private cars), reducing the cost of travel and mileage.

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The website of the Carsharing Initiative is at: http://www.icscarsharing.it/

Related articles on carsharing in Nuova Mobilità:

• Lezioni da un carrello della spesa
  
• La condivisione è più sicura
  
• Il car sharing giapponese
  
• Il car sharing in Canada
  
• Il car sharing P2P
  
• Il car sharing inglese
  
• Il car sharing in Grecia
  
• Il car sharing che non c'è ancora
  

About the author
Tiziano Schiavon is Commercial Director of CarCityClub (carsharing in Turin), and responsible for all marketing activities and communication. Strong promoter of sustainable mobility and the possible integration between different transport systems, in his free time is devoted to family, practices karate, and is passionate about military history of the eighteenth century.

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