Sharing a car for commuting and other trips can reduce a driver's stress, save money and reduce pollution, according to results released today by CarLink, a California public-private partnership program that was the first "smart" carsharing test in the United States. The 54 individuals enrolled in the CarLink project shared 12 natural-gas-powered Honda Civics for 10 months. The participants were from San Francisco, Oakland and other East Bay communities. The cars were based in premium parking spaces at the Dublin-Pleasanton station of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, or BART. "Homeside Users" drove a CarLink vehicle between their homes and the BART station daily, keeping the car overnight and on weekends for personal use. "Workside Commuters" rode on BART to the Dublin-Pleasanton station and then drove CarLink vehicles to and from work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 15 miles away. In carsharing lingo, the project was "smart" because it employed automatic technologies for car reservations, pickup, operation and return. Homeside Users paid $200 per month. Workside Commuters paid $60 per month, which was shared with a co-worker by carpooling. The fees included fuel, insurance, registration and maintenance costs. "CarLink revealed some of the promise of carsharing as a transportation alternative," said Susan Shaheen, a post-doctoral researcher at Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH), a multi-disciplinary program administered by the University of California, Berkeley. Shaheen studied CarLink as part of her doctoral research in ecology in conjunction with the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies. "With CarLink, individuals had an alternative to single-occupancy vehicles, shifting their commute trips to transit and clean vehicles." Key study findings include: -- CarLink users' commutes were less stressful. -- Average commute time was a few minutes shorter for Homeside Users and about 15 minutes longer for Workside Commuters. -- CarLink participants drove less than before they joined the study. -- CarLink participants increased their use of BART for recreational travel. -- The combination of CarLink, BART and carpooling resulted in an average net commute reduction of about 20 vehicle miles per day. CarLink resulted in at least 20 new BART trips each day. -- Several Homeside Users said that if CarLink became a permanent service, they would sell one of their personal cars, which would greatly reduce their transportation costs. The CarLink program was a research project with several government and private industry partners. They included the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis; PATH; the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans); American Honda Motor Company, Inc.; BART; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; INVERS; and Teletrac. "The CarLink project helped us understand and evaluate consumer response to the carsharing idea," said Robert Bienenfeld, manager of Honda's environmental vehicle projects. Honda has a longstanding interest in promoting mobility, and has extensive research underway in the area of Intelligent Community Vehicle Systems (ICVS). "CarLink II will help us to further refine these technologies and ideas." "Personal vehicles sit an average of 23 hours per day," said Shaheen, the CarLink program manager and lead researcher. "When we do use them, they usually carry only one person. With carsharing, individuals have access to a car when they need it, but when it's not in use, others have access to it. "Carsharing has many benefits -- for the participant, who saves money on car payments, insurance, registration and maintenance; for the community, which needs less highway construction and traffic management; for transit, which can attract and serve more customers; for businesses, which require fewer parking spaces; and for the environment," Shaheen said. Carsharing can be thought of as organized short-term car rental. Existing carsharing organizations typically provide a choice of vehicle type, rental rate and convenience suited to participant needs. Over the past decade, carsharing has become more common, especially in Europe and North America. Approximately 200 carsharing organizations are active in 450 cities throughout Switzerland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Great Britain and Italy. In the United States, besides the CarLink project, programs are underway or being planned in Seattle, Chicago, Portland, Ore., Boulder, Colo., and Riverside, Calif. The larger European enterprises, especially in Germany and Switzerland, have started to deploy a suite of automatic technologies for car reservations, pickup, operation and return. These so-called "smart" systems make it easier to manage and use the programs. In 1999, two smart carsharing demonstration programs were deployed in California -- CarLink and Intellishare, a collaboration between Honda and UC Riverside that employed smart kiosks at five lots on or near the UC Riverside campus where students and staff could reserve and check out electric vehicles. "The one-person, one-car approach to transportation is not sustainable," said UC Davis professor Daniel Sperling, an internationally recognized expert on sustainable transportation and director of the Institute of Transportation Studies. "Smart carsharing is an innovative step in the right direction -- toward transportation that is more economic, equitable and environmental." "In 20 years, California's population will increase from 34 million to 46 million," said Caltrans acting director Tony Harris. "If we are to meet the needs of Californians, it is clear that we will have to be innovative and continue to thoroughly examine alternative transportation possibilities such as smart carsharing." "BART is pleased and proud to be a part of the CarLink program," said BART board president Tom Blalock. "The Bay Area's sclerotic freeways are starting to choke the region's economy. BART is happy to do its part in reopening those arteries." BART general manager Thomas Margro said CarLink's carsharing principle allows the transit system to get better use of its finite parking spaces. "Carsharing means more than one or two BART passengers per parking space, and that means more riders on our trains and fewer cars on the roads." The CarLink program was launched on January 20, 1999, and ended on November 15, 1999. Its purpose was to examine participants' real-life experiences, identify market segments where smart carsharing would be attractive, and study the use of intelligent technologies to reduce the inconvenience of carsharing. Throughout the program, CarLink members provided data for the final evaluation in the form of questionnaires and travel diaries. Participants were very cooperative in furnishing information and feedback about their CarLink use. They completed questionnaires before and after the program, provided data about their travel patterns, participated in household interviews and focus groups, and gave dozens of media interviews. The next program, CarLink II, is currently being designed to launch in January 2001 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Negotiations are under way to run it as a pilot program initially managed by ITS-Davis but eventually becoming independent. CarLink II will be similar to CarLink I but this time the research focus will be on demonstrating a business case and testing new carsharing technologies. To order the CarLink Field Test Report, contact the Institute of Transportation Studies at itspublications@ucdavis.edu, (530) 752-4909 or fax at (530) 752-6572.