7. Communauto’s position
• Communauto asked to the city
of Montreal (April 2011) to
confirm its interest for this kind
of service and proposed itself to
put in place a system
– Strongly integrated with transit,
taxi, carsharing…
– Able to benefits to all collectives
transportation modes.
• The city of Montreal launched a
consultation (April-July 2013) to
know what the opinion of the
citizens was
8. Auto-Mobile
the transit oriented, responsible one-way carsharing service
• Free online subscription in real-time
• Access with the personal transit card (OPUS card)
• Free floating : on street parking (except paying), no stations required
• No reservation, no return station
• Electric charging managed by Auto-Mobile
9. Auto-Mobile
the transit oriented, responsible one-way carsharing service
• Integration with transit, taxi
and carsharing
• Between 250 et 350 cars
according the configuration
• 80 Km2 area served
• Scheduling :
– 1st phase: summer 2013
(23 cars)
– 2nd phase: spring-summer
2014 according to the city of
Montreal’s plan
• 0,38 $/min, 12 $/h, 50 $/d
10. Pilot project
• When : mid-June to Winter…
• Where : Plateau-Mont-Royal (100 000 Inh.,
8 km2)
• How : 23 EV cars parked anywhere on the
street, including resident permits and
excluding meters.
• Why : To evaluate the impact on parking,
on other transportation modes (taxi and
public transportation) and the interest of
the population.
• With : the research is supervised by
Polytechnique Montreal, with the
collaboration of Taxi Diamond.
• The city, the transit company (STM) and the
parking agency as external observers
• More information :
http://communauto.com/auto-mobile/
13. Logistic : tech, charge & parking
• On board technology, managing
software and mobile app were
provided in very short time by VULOG
• Parking : access to on-street parking,
including residents permits, excl
paying places and hour of cleaning of
street
• Charge made by Communauto : 2
vehicles are charged every morning
and 2 every evening and the charged
ones replaces the least charged in the
fleet
• No actual need to rebalance the fleet
14. Research and results
• Part of a “continuous” research project
Communauto/Polytechnique
• Analysis from three sources
– data on lending periods :
date, time, vehicle, distance, duration, home
location of users
• 3466 reservations over 13 weeks
– short survey addressed to the members after
every use of the system: no. of trips, trip
purpose, what mode is replaced, satisfaction
15. Distance travelled during use
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%
0 to 1 km
2 to 3 km
4 to 5 km
7.5 to 10 km
15 to 20 km
30 to 50 km
100 km and more
% of reservations
16. Duration of lending period
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%
0 to 5 min.
5 to 10 min.
10 to 15 min.
15 to 20 min.
20 to 30 min.
30 to 45 min.
45 min. to 1h
1h to 2h
2h to 3h
3h to 6h
6h to 12h
12h and more
% of reservations
17. « Learning curve » over weeks
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
Week number
Average distance per res.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
Week number
Average duration per res.
18. Distribution of duration over
weekdays
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
0 to 5 min. 5 to 10
min.
10 to 15
min.
15 to 20
min.
20 to 30
min.
30 to 45
min.
45 min. to
1h
1h to 2h 2h to 3h 3h to 6h 6h to 12h 12h and
more
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
19. Home location of users
Longueuil
Laval
Montreal CBD
Auto-Mobile
zone
20. What was the purpose of your trip with Auto-mobile?
Survey results
21. When using the Auto-mobile vehicle, how many activities
did you do (number of times you parked the car)?
22. If Auto-mobile hadn’t existed, what transportation mode would
you have used for this trip?
Public
transportation
28%
A regular
communauto
vehicle
19%
Taxi
11%
I wouldn't have
taken the trip
11%
Walk
10%
Someone would
have
accompanied me
4%
My car or moto
4%
My bike
5% Bixi
8%
24. Some numbers
June July August
Hours / car / day 0.69 1.48 1.97
Usage / car 16 (half month) 52 45
Km / car 174 (half month) 372 467
Trip 0 km 36% 22% 27%
# Usage per user 2.9 3.6 4.4
June July August
Revenues / car
2012
2013
25. Research perspectives
for one-way carsharing
• Cross-analyze the survey responses with the trip logs
– to understand the use of the service in relation with trip
purpose, mode replacement
• Analyze GPS traces
– to characterize each individual trip within the whole
reservation (origin and destination, extent of the
trip, speed, etc.)
• Measure the place of OWCS in urban mobility, assess
its impacts
– Attributes of household, other trips made by HH
– GHG assessment (? electric!)
26. Conclusion and follow-up
• The service in this configuration seems much easier to
manage than expected (redistribution of the fleet,
charging, etc.)
• The usage appears to complete the offer of carsharing for
« short and spontaneous » trips not necessarily one way
• Usage and revenues are increasing faster than expected
• Possible bias due to the limited zone and the fact of
addressing in priority Communauto’s members (weather?)
• Much more research and analysis has to be done to
understand the interactions with other modes
• The project will be extended in the Winter in order to test
operation in this season
28. Other research projects on carsharing
• Previous
– supply and demand interactions: showed no
saturation sign of CS service in Montreal
– GHG assessment: showed that CS helps reduce GHG
emissions in urban context
– travel behavior of HH: showed that CS members
behave differently than regular car owners, drive less
• Actual
– GPS traces analysis
– Impacts of CS on HH car ownership
29. GPS traces analysis
• What happens during a
reservation? How many
trips? Where?
Type
Trip distance
(km)
Activity duration
(min.)
Trip chain length
(km)
Trip chain’s
activity duration
(min.)
Trips / trip
chain
Urban 4.75 54.63 21.26 244.02 4.48
Interurban 36.54 69.74 139.58 333.38 3.82
With home location 7.40 49.07 41.29 283.21 5.58
Without home location 8.17 56.84 35.31 245.91 4.32
Urban only, with home
location
3.93 49.17 21.91 272.46 5.57
Urban only, without
home location
4.82 55.17 20.90 234.01 4.33
Global 8.11 56.22 36.91 255.91 4.55
Average
1st trip
11:46 to 11:53
2nd trip
11:59 to 12:24
3rd trip
13:52 to 14:13
4th trip
15:39 to 16:00
GPS event
GPS timepoint
5th trip
16:22 to 16:26
A
B
C
D
E
30. Impacts of CS on HH car ownership
• A model of car
ownership based on
1998, 2003 and 2008
shows that CS has a
slight but real impact
on the decrease of
car ownership in
central Montreal