Carsharing in a university setting: Impacts on vehicle ownership, parking demand, and mobility in Ithaca, NY

Carsharing is growing rapidly in popularity, often backed by government and private partners, such as universities and developers. While reduced parking demand is frequently cited as a reason to promote carsharing, virtually no quantitative analysis has been done on the impact of carsharing on parking demand. Instead, prior studies focus on vehicle ownership, which has an implied connection to parking demand. This paper analyzes the impact of carsharing on parking demand in a university setting (with just over 1000 carsharing users) using a member survey and parking permit sales data. Changes in parking demand are broken down by geographic area and parking type. Members report the vast majority (over 76%) of forgone vehicles would be parked in the same area as the member's household on most weekdays, nights, and weekends. Roughly 30% would be parked on the street at most times, with the percentage parked in personal driveways and garages peaking at roughly 40% on nights and weekends and dropping to 26% on weekdays. Members reported an increase in shopping trips made by car or truck (statistically significant at 1% level), leading to a small increase in parking demand at stores, but this increase was much smaller than the reductions seen elsewhere. The paper also assesses other impacts which have so far been nearly exclusively measured in relatively large cities. For example, the survey revealed a reduction of 15.3 personal vehicles for every carsharing vehicle, roughly equivalent to findings from major cities.