A legitimate role for car sharing schemes

There has been some recent debate about whether car-sharing schemes should be included on the proposed public transport smartcard. I won't discuss this here, but will instead go into the merits and limitations of car sharing and its likely effect on public transport.

The space for car sharing exists because there is currently a large gap between people's transport choices. For most people, and excluding taxis and hire cars, these boil down to:

(i) No car, use of public transport, walking and cycling only

(ii) full-time car ownership only, or

(iii) Full-time car ownership plus some public transport use

Because of the high fixed costs of car ownership, (iii) is little cheaper than (ii), at least unless petrol prices double or treble. (i) is an option most wouldn't accept.

Car sharing adds another choice to the mix, and unlike full-time car ownership, I believe it is likely to be favourable to public transport. It also makes a useful distinction between car ownership and use and encourages participants to use the right travel mode for the job rather than automatically reaching for the car keys.

Car sharing is a niche market ideal for singles, couples (particuarly childless) and the retired. It is most suitable in suburbs where public transport is good and access to a shared car is a reasonable alternative to universal car ownership.

What sort of trips would car sharers use vehicles for? I would anticipate these would be specialised trips that public transport does not efficiently serve and is unlikely to do so, even with substantial service improvements. These include some forms of bulky goods shopping, one-off home renovation work, many country trips and possibly late night travel.

Though those 'difficult' trips could only be 20% of a person's total number of trips (the rest being commuting or shopping where public transport is convenient), use of car alternatives is so impractical that the need to make such trips is a key inducement to car purchase. Once the decision to bbuy a car has been made (including acceptance of the fixed financial costs) there may be a temptation to use it more, even for some trips that were previously done by public transport.

In some circles there may be concern that car sharing may reduce public transport patronage and thus should be discouraged. In third world countries this is a high risk as car owneship is low. However where car ownership is already high, such an effect will be marginal as few of the abovementioned 'difficult' trips are made on public transport anyway.

In any Australian city, the most likely outcome is a small reduction in single-owner car trips and a slight shift to public transport, walking and cycling. This is because although people have access to a car when needed, it's not quite as easy as grabbing the keys and walking 20 steps to the garage. Chances are the local tram stop will be as closer than the carshare depot and the former is the mode that will be chosen for more trips.

Environmentally, an average of 0.25 (or even 0.5) cars per adult (participating in a car sharing scheme) is an improvement over one car each. Walking/cycling/public transport supplemented by easy access to a shared car could lower transport energy use per capita compared to currently available choices. Car sharing is certainly superior to the so-called 'green' car loans, which are more spin than substance as they do nothing for car-dependence, resource economy, urban amenity, congestion, parking or indeed financial wellbeing.

Shared car ownership challenges many existing attitudes to various transport modes by providing a 'middle way' that may be attractive to many. It breaks down the current tight link between car use and car access and the traffic engineers assumption of universal (full-time) car ownership. Also, because participants of car sharing schemes are likely to use public transport for many trips, it breaks the stereotype of the latter as being a residual welfare services and makes it more a mode of choice.

In local planning car sharing could dismantle the doctrine that houses (and shops) should have a minimum number of parking spots. This has good planning and amenity implications and breaks down the 'concrete jungle' as the need to provide for parking and car traffic is the number one cause of urban blight and pedestrian and transit-hostile local centres.

Though not a substitute for good public transport and unlikely to appeal to a large market, car sharing has a niche role that should be recognised and encouraged.

Passenger information old, new and improvised

1. Something old

The side of a tram shelter showing a clear tram map. These maps are examples of detailed yet easy to read passenger information.







2. Something improvised (but better than nothing)

A timetable at a Glenhuntly Road bus stop.




3. Something new

Through the local papers Metlink has started advertising that pocket travel guides will shortly appear in letter boxes.

A timetable feast

With the opening of Perth's new Thornlie line and service improvements on some of the others, a host of new train and bus timetables have appeared on the Transperth site.



You have until August 8 to view both old and new timetables.



The timetables show four major improvements to Perth train services:



1. 15 minute (or better) clockface service at nearly all stations 7 days a week.



The only stations with lesser service are Loch St, Grant St and Thornlie (on Sundays). Some south-eastern stations have four trains an hour but these are not clockface on Sundays. Before this change only two lines and a small minority of stations received a 15 min service on Sundays.



2. More peak express services on all lines.



Instead of an ABAB alternating pattern of peak and stopping services, there are now more expresses between 'all stations' services. At major stations service headways can be down to 4 minutes but as high as 20 minutes for smaller stations. Perth is a two-track system so expresses cannot overtake stopping trains as occurs on the longer Melbourne lines.



3. Travel times on the Armadale line reduced by up to 5 minutes, with express services running 7 days a week.



This is achieved by stopping Thornlie services at all inner stations to permit express running on Armadale trains.



4. The opening of the Thornlie line. Services are every 15 minutes Monday - Saturday and 30 minutes on Sundays and evenings.



The '15 min x 7day' running is nationally singificant for several reasons. (i) Perth now has consistently higher service levels than other Australian cities, (ii) Apart from some exceptions on the Armadale line, Perth effectively has a '7 day timetable' with consistent service frequencies and depature times and (iii) these improvements were achieved in a city that bans much Sunday trading (reaffirmed by referendum earlier this year).



Transperth is to be congratulated for this substantial improvement to train services which has grown the network while making rail services faster and more frequent.



Now onto buses. Many bus timetables have changed. Thornlie Station is now shown, with one route (228) now starting there. Apart from that there was no wholesale truncation of routes at Thornlie (instead of Cannington), probably due to the desirability of direct services to Cannington via Carousel.



Perth makes extensive use of circular route feeder buses serving stations along the Armadale line. 231/232 was the best of these, with what is effectively a 15 min service through the staggering of two 30 min routes. This achieves the desirable aim of having every train met by a bus.



(this message appeared earlier but was revised after the new Armadale timetable came out)