5 minutes Date Enacted: Apr 16, 2016
The County Board approved a Point-to-Point Carsharing Demonstration Study with car2go on June 16, 2015 and service began on October 22, 2015. The point-to-point carsharing demonstration study has been operating in Arlington for approximately five months. There are almost 2,000 Arlington resident members, and over 6,600 trips have been taken on the Arlington system. However, membership and vehicle use in the first couple months (NovemberDecember) of the program was lower than anticipated and several complaints were received from residents reporting car2go vehicles that were idle/parked for longer-than-permitted durations. All of these relocation requests were resolved by car2go staff. In response to idle times and higher than expected operational costs, car2go reduced the fleet size in January 2016. With a much smaller fleet, relocation calls quickly tapered to near zero, and the per-vehicle efficiency of the system increased, but there is also less availability overall and reduced usefulness to members. Membership continues to grow, but the current fleet service level is not a good solution for a long-term program. Staff has discussed these challenges with car2go, and with the District of Columbia Department of Transportation (DDOT), since the point-to-point service has been operating there since 2012.
Excerpt Sourced from Board Memo