Car sharing as a vehicle for sustainable mobility: the case of Tricity

Abstract

Nowadays, making mobility sustainable is an essential issue to all cities. The need for changes and evolving attitude of residents to owning a car give car sharing schemes an opportunity to play a vital role in urban areas. Car sharing is a system within which cars are shared by different users. It emerged in Europe and in the world already in the 1970 s but in Poland is still a very new and not commonly known arrangement.
The paper discusses the role of car sharing in making urban mobility more sustainable and analyses the performance of Traficar company operating in Tricity (Poland). The study was conducted based on a questionnaire on a sample of the company’s customers in Tricity. Results of the study have confirmed the hypothesis that car sharing in Tricity encourages residents to more often avail themselves of innovative and sustainable forms of transport. Moreover, the study has shown that car sharing in Tricity is positively assessed by the users and stimulates changes in mobility-related behaviour of the local population.