I-GO CEO Sharon Feigon represented I-GO Car Sharing at the Transportation Research Board’s 89th annual meeting this week in Washington, D.C. The event surveys all transportation modes, with more than 3,000 presentations in nearly 600 sessions addressing topics of interest to policy makers, administrators, practitioners, researchers, and representatives of government, industry, and academic institutions.
On Wednesday, Jan. 13, Sharon cochaired the Shared Vehicle Committee. She also emailed us this link to a Megan McConville post on TheCityFix.com, an online resource for sustainable transport news, advocacy and “best practice” solutions from around the world. The blog is produced by EMBARQ – The World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport, a non-profit organization that works with cities in the developing world to catalyze and help implement sustainable solutions to problems of urban mobility.
McConville reports on a session about car sharing and bike sharing. Among the more interesting highlights:
- An estimated 9 to 13 vehicles are removed from the road for each car sharing vehicle deployed.
- Connectivity to public transit, the age of the transit station, and the average employment rate had a positive impact on car-sharing market share.
- There are 100 bike-sharing programs in 125 cities with more than 140,000 bikes, with another 45 planned in 22 countries in 2010. (Pictured at right: Washington D.C.’s SmartBike DC bike-share program.)
- The next stage for bike sharing involves flexible/mobile docking stations, smart card integration with other transportation modes, and advanced technologies including GPS, touchscreen kiosks, and e-bikes.
We’d love to see that sort of high-tech integration in Chicago. I-GO, for its part, already has a joint smart card with the CTA, enabling access to both our fleet of cars and CTA buses and trains. But we hope that’s just the start of even more exciting multi-modal systems to come.
