Study Finds Zipcar Membership Reduces Personal Car Ownership

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Study Finds Zipcar Membership Reduces Personal Car Ownership

By Donald Wood

A new study has found that workers who use the Zipcar service are less likely to own a car than those who do not use the car sharing program.

In a report from University of California, Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC), two in five corporate Zipcar members sell or avoid buying a vehicle after joining the car sharing service. Corporate members are classified as people who join a car sharing program through an affiliation with an employer.

Overall, the study reports the use of Zipcars for work has helped decrease the need for at least 33,000 vehicles on the roads of North America. Of the people who abandoned car ownership, 41 percent take public transportation, 22 percent travel via bicycle and another 41 percent walk more often.

Co-director of the TSRC at University of California, Berkeley, Susan Shaheen, Ph.D., released a statement about the study and the impact of Zipcar on the business world:

“The business and corporate market for car sharing – until now – has not been well researched. Applying our team and research expertise to Zipcar’s raw data gives us the first look into how business car sharing members change behavior, and we found that this service yielded reduced car ownership and increased multi-modal behavior, particularly among corporate members that became zero-car households due to business car sharing.”

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July 31, 2015