Impacts of a new free-floating car-sharing system in Basel

Abstract

Free-floating car-sharing is a new and fast-growing service. Since it differs from the well-studied station-based round-trip car-sharing service in many structural aspects, market potential analyses as well as estimates of environmental impacts are not necessarily transferable. This research attempts to estimate the environmental impact of free-floating car-sharing using a smartphone- based GPS-tracking approach. In this paper, the methodology of the study as well as the achieved data quality are discussed. Experiences from this study confirm, that smartphone-based GPS-tracking systems are already working well. However, participant’s data privacy concerns are found to be a major obstacle in the method’s implementation.