It would be a big step forward for the environment, for a liveable city and for social justice if fewer one-and-a-half to two-tonne metal cubes occupied our streets. This could be helped by public car sharing, which multiplies the use of cars - the average car is stationary 95% of the time, according to US research (and even more in less car-dependent, denser urban Europe). The public car would reduce their number and free up significant areas for other uses. And in terms of cost, it would make car use more affordable for a wider range of people, for those occasions when it is the only option.

However, the public car will only help to solve environmental and urban problems if its users give up or do not buy their own cars. Also, if they really only hire a public car when public transport, cycling and other means of transport are really not an option. Otherwise the number of cars will increase, not decrease, and the public car will only reduce the share of greener modes of transport.

In previous articles, we have looked in detail at the benefits of the public car, and how much more and different a station-bound public car offers compared to a free parking one (here and here). Below, we attempt to set out the minimum requirements for a public car system that offers a full alternative to private cars. We will look at how much of this is achieved by the current public car systems in Brussels and Budapest, and how to approach the minimum required in a difficult terrain such as the domestic one.

Basic services for public car schemes that replace the private car

The most basic version of the currently widespread public car services typically offers one or two types of urban vans parked randomly in the more densely populated inner areas of cities, waiting to be reserved and used (the so-called free-floating system). Reservations can be made at least 15-25 minutes before use, and charges are based on a per-minute rate, so there is an incentive to free the car immediately after a single trip, usually a few kilometres, within the city.

Such systems cannot provide a reliable, practical option for purchasing and transporting large quantities or masses of goods, because there may not be a car available at the shop and it is expensive to keep one waiting. They are not suitable for trips to other cities or out-of-town locations (or several in a row), or even for trips abroad, even for several days, as it is too expensive to book a car for long periods and electric cars run out of battery power over longer distances. Not suitable for trips with a lot of luggage or small children, because luggage and child seats cannot be left in the car when leaving the car for short or long periods. For pre-planned car-only trips, there may be a problem if it is discovered 15 minutes before the planned departure that there are no cars available in the area. We cannot transport large goods (such as furniture) ourselves because the car is too small.

The public transport systems available in the country today have already taken steps to address these limitations, for example by introducing reduced per-minute charges for the time the car is parked or by capping the tariff per day. But is this enough?

A user who hires his own car needs a guarantee that he can easily pick up the public car at a predetermined time at a location close to him and make any journey he could make in his own car. To do this, the public car system must meet a number of requirements.

• It should be possible to book the car at any time (even weeks or months) before the trip at a location close to the user (not only to know immediately before departure whether the trip can be made with the type of car envisaged).
• Make it easy to pick up and drop off the car, i.e. little more complicated than managing your own car.
• The minimum booking time should be no more than 15 minutes, and the maximum should be at least three weeks (you can use it to pick up a piece of furniture next door or even to go on holiday).
• There should be no geographical limit on use, only on return (e.g. the car can be used abroad).
• There should also be a range of public cars that can get to any point in the country and back without a long break for charging (i.e. either high-capacity, fast-charging electric cars or petrol cars).
• Make it affordable not only to drive the car, but also to wait longer during the reservation and to rent it for a day or several days.
  (Although a private car is still rarely electric these days, a public transport company should be expected to offer electric car travel where it is possible for the customer.)

It is advantageous if there are optional services that are not offered by car ownership, but which can increase the attractiveness of public car systems. For example, there is a wide range of car types for hire, from minis to vans and minibuses, to choose the most appropriate one for the purpose of the journey. In addition, in the case of informal parking systems, the car does not have to be returned to its starting point but can be left anywhere within the urban zone (i.e. it can also be used on one-way roads within certain limits). Finally, the extension of public car systems to the country's major cities and major rail hubs could even serve to green the national transport network, as it would allow, for example, a customer arriving by train from another city to continue his journey in a public car picked up at a railway station, avoiding hundreds of kilometres of more polluting driving.

Based on the above, we have prepared a detailed table, available here in a new window, which examines how the public car systems available in Hungary, the traditional car rental companies and the Belgian company Cambio perform in these respects. In comparing costs, it is assumed that the user only hires a public car for journeys that cannot be made without a car or are difficult to make, such as large shopping trips, weekend getaways, family holidays. For daily commuting and smaller urban trips, they use public transport and public bicycles.

The table shows that while starting a reservation with public car systems is almost as easy as opening your own car, the disadvantages of traditional car rental services include the need to sign a contract each time. With Cambio in Belgium, you can know well in advance where and when you will pick up your car, thanks to a dense network of stations and a flexible booking system. With Hungarian public car companies, however, pre-booking is not possible beyond 15-25 minutes or is subject to a surcharge, and it is not possible to know in advance where the car will be available. For car rental companies, the problem is the small number of locations. There is also no Hungarian system that offers sufficient flexibility in terms of both the duration of the reservation (minimum one day for car rental companies, maximum three days for most public car rental companies) and the geographical limitation of use (only rental cars can be taken abroad, not public cars).

However, with one exception, all providers now offer cars with a more spacious interior for families or longer journeys, and some offer a wide range. Electric cars are available from most operators, but only one has made them the dominant (or even the only) vehicle type. National interconnection of public car systems and rail networks is still the future in Hungary, with only some car rental companies having branches in major cities outside Budapest.

In terms of costs, ShareNow, which offers a more flexible, more elite but more expensive service, is well separated from the price-competitive GreenGo and Mol Limo on the domestic market. A group of 4-5 adults can take a public car for a weekend trip of a few hundred kilometres at a very competitive price compared to rail.

On an annual basis, the combination of any public car system with public transport is cheaper than owning a car, although ShareNow comes close.

However, on a purchasing power parity basis, Cambio's service is still significantly more financially attractive to the Belgian than to the Hungarian population. The most expensive of all is to try to arrange your travel with a car rental company only, which means that it is only recommended when you need the flexibility they offer (travelling abroad, booking more than 30 days in advance or renting for longer than 30 days).

To sum up: unfortunately, the services of public car companies in Hungary either suffer from significant shortcomings and are therefore only a difficult and precarious substitute for owning a car, or cost about the same as owning a car (without the annoyances, but few people realise this). Yet, as an example, the Belgian Cambio offers a package of services at a sufficiently attractive price that there is little compromise in giving up car ownership. For a detailed description, see the note at the end of this article.

Possible solutions to the main challenge of pre-booking cars

To be able to pre-book a public car in a predictable way, it is not enough for the operating companies to decide. As in the case of Cambio, there is a need for a high density of parking spaces that can be reserved exclusively for cars of a given public car company, from which the customer can pick up the car and return it to the same place. Although some companies can deliver the car to the customer's home, the lack of parking spaces can be a problem, the extra cost of this service and the question of how environmentally friendly the delivery staff will be in getting the car to the next location.

Unfortunately, there are legal and political obstacles to the creation of named parking spaces for public car companies in this country. The parking regulations of the capital's municipality do not list these companies among the organisations for which exclusive parking spaces can be designated by the district authorities. It would be in vain for public car companies to pay the parking fee, even though it is obvious that reducing the number of private car parking spaces would also reduce car traffic in the city and that a public car can replace at least ten private cars, freeing up parking spaces in the long term. At present, local authorities are reluctant to take the political risk of 'expropriating' parking spaces for the benefit of public car companies, which would be conspicuously displayed with company logos and would be vacant while cars are on the move (i.e. most of the day when the service is popular). Yet a recent survey showed that two thirds of people in the district would support converting one in every 200 car parks into public car parks (creating around 35 car parks in the district).

The few larger micromobility points planned by the municipality of the capital, where there are plans to reserve spaces for public cars, will not help either, but these will not belong to a single company, but any public car can be parked there if there is a free space. It will take more than that to run a pre-booking system.

An alternative solution could be what GreenGo is already experimenting with in its small vans. They are not completely free parking, nor are they tied to specific parking spaces, but can only be picked up in certain areas and returned to the same place. A similar system could be operated by covering the whole city with 500×500 metre zones and assigning cars from their fleet to them.

In this way, public cars could be booked in advance, if not always at the same place, but within reach of the place of residence. The advantage of this method is that it does not require the whole fleet of free parking spaces to be used, but only a few cars per neighbourhood. This could initially be an experimental zone with just a few neighbourhoods in the most densely populated parts of the city centre. The cars could be painted slightly differently to indicate that they are not completely free parking, so that anyone who sees them on the street will be aware of the constraints.

The map where spontaneous reservations are made would now show not only how full the car is, but also whether it is bound to a neighbourhood and, if so, how long it can be used if it has a reservation.

Of course, it would be much better than this coercive solution if local authorities were to get fully behind public transport and allow individual companies to set up clearly visible public car parks on their territory. It would be quicker to establish public transport as an option and to win over private cars if it were not only advertised by painting cars, but also by a network of signposted stations with a barrier to protect empty parking spaces.

According to a recent newspaper article, 22,000 of Cambio's 53,000 customers are in Brussels. They have 679 stations in 67 cities, and 650 of their 1,750 cars are based in Brussels. They handle 30,000 reservations a month.

All cars can be picked up and dropped off at designated stations for 2 to 5 cars, which are set up by sacrificing a few parking spaces. As long as a car is in motion, its parking space is protected by a small barrier that can be opened with a key to prevent anyone else from parking there. The network is now so dense in Brussels that no station is usually more than 500 metres away from any given location. Of course, you have to take into account that the city is a third of the size of Budapest (see the two cities on top of each other).

The network covers the whole country, with at least one station in each of the 67 cities. So they allow for train/car intermodality, you don't have to drive all the way, just pick up a public car at the nearest station to your destination.

Currently, Cambio is the main public car service in Brussels, with only a small free parking system alongside. Previously, ShareNow and Zipcar were also present as free parking services, as well as Zencar, a station-based electric car-only service similar to GreenGo, but all have been phased out for various reasons.

In 2016, Brussels-based Cambio conducted a survey of its users, which showed that 87% of trips were longer than 25 kilometres. 96-98% of members use public transport once or twice a week or less, half use public transport only once or three times a month, but take public transport on average seven times a week. So they only use public transport when they really need to, and use other means of transport when they don't.

The potential of using public transport in rural areas is also illustrated by the fact that while a subscriber in Brussels uses public transport on average twice a month, a customer in a small town of 17,000 inhabitants (Ciney) uses public transport eight times a month, because of its more car-dependent nature.

According to the company's website, there are three tariff packages depending on the intensity of use: €4 per month for those who drive no more than 50 kilometres once or twice a month, €8 for those who drive between 50 and 300 kilometres per month and €22 for those who drive more than 300 kilometres.

In addition, there is both an hourly and a mileage charge, both depending on the type of car you choose (ranging from a mini van to a minivan to an 8-9 seater minibus) and the type of subscription you have.

The hourly rate is low enough (from €1.55, or 560 forints, to €4.2, or 1,500 forints) to allow you to rent a car for longer periods, no matter how much you drive it. The mileage rate in principle follows the price of petrol and again depends on the car and the tariff package, and costs more for the first 100 kilometres than afterwards.

So the range is from €0.2 to €0.45 (from 72 to 162 forints). It should be noted, however, that fuel is much more expensive in Belgium than in Hungary, with a litre costing the equivalent of 620 forints per litre instead of the current maximum of 480 forints per litre in this country.

At Campbio, the hourly rate for bookings longer than 12 hours has been converted into a fixed daily rate, so no more than 12 hours are charged per day. The maximum booking time is 22 days (which allows for a longer holiday, even abroad, as you are allowed to drive abroad). At night (between 11pm and 7am) there is no hourly rate, and the car can be booked for free. Pre-booking does not cost any money and is not an option, but a standard service. Cambio's reservations are usually made any time before the trip (up to nine months in advance). The reservation is always for a specific car, not a station or a type of car within a station. The reservation therefore includes the ID of the car booked. For cambio bookings, you must not only specify the starting point of the booking, but also the drop-off date, which, if exceeded and someone else is unable to pick up the car because of this, will incur a penalty (€15) and the next customer to lose out will receive a credit of the same amount. Any number of changes can be made or cancelled on a booking, with no transaction costs, unless they are made within 24 hours of the start date. If cancelled within 24 hours, a cancellation fee of 30 percent of the normal hourly rate for the length of the cancelled booking will be charged for the cancelled period. For example, if you cancel a reservation of 8 hours at the cheapest hourly rate available, you will be charged 8×0.53 €=4.2 €. The same cancellation rate applies for the remaining time if you return the car before the end of the booking period.

 

András Tóth
volunteer of the Clean Air Action Group

This article was originally published in G7's EKONOMI column.