In my previous entry, I looked at how vertical integration using car sharing services was a wonderful way to introduce new technologies to the marketplace, lower the cost of personal transportation and lower the overall environmental impact of transporting ourselves.One of the features of car sharing services is that they work best in dense urban areas. To make them useful to a suburban dweller, In one of the comments I introduced the idea of bringing the car to the renter. Just like there are pizza delivery people who will bring you your dinner, there could be car delivery people who bring you the car you requested at the time you requested. They then zip back for the next pickup on a (motor)bike in the trunk. The Scooter Patrol does this in California for people who have drunk too much and need their car driven home.This system works for people who live in the suburb and need a car to make several stops in one day or need it to transport something in the trunk. It definitely does the job, but it doesn't have the lowest impact on the environment, nor does it help with the congestion on the roads to the city from the suburbs.Let's say that I'm a suburban dweller and can get to the city using public transportation. Because I want to perform several errands while there, I still want a car once I arrive. How can we handle that?
I'm going to borrow a term from the telecom industry, and refer to this as the 'last mile' problem. The obvious solution to the last mile problem is to have a car sharing service ready with my car once I arrive. Instead of arranging for a pickup at my home, I reserve a car on the other end of my journey. This neatly gives me the lower environmental impact of mass transit to the city and the flexibility of personal transportation.
To encourage people to use this system, a city could exempt users of car sharing services from a congestion charge for access to the core of the city. The overall environmental impact would be on average lower, the city would become more livable (due to it have less paralyzing traffic jams) and people would still have the flexibility they require to accomplish their tasks in the city.