Abstract

Carsharing, a modern mobility solution, can change the way how we move around cities. However, the concept has not everywhere lived up to its predicted market potential yet. In Europe, it is noticeable that the system is mostly dominating in the Western part. Countries in Eastern and Southern Europe on the other hand are characterized by younger and smaller carsharing markets. With the help of expert interviews, the current situation of carsharing in nine selected European countries, that are classified as emerging markets by MSCI, was investigated. The results affirm, that in most of those countries a minor number of carsharing operators with small fleets are present. Yet, some others have already advanced further. The study also revealed several critical success factors for free-floating carsharing, again with input from an expert. Finally, based on those critical success factors, the nine countries were individually assessed and ranked according to their current market potential using the Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique. It turned out that especially Poland offers beneficial conditions for free-floating carsharing. O carsharing, uma moderna solução de mobilidade, pode mudar a forma como nos movimentamos pelas cidades. No entanto, não é possível afirmar que todo o seu potencial de mercado tenha sido atingido na plenitude. Na Europa, a solução tem sido predominantemente implementada na parte Ocidental. Contrariamente, os países da Europa Oriental e do Norte, apresentam, neste âmbito, mercados em estádios ainda iniciais. Através do contributo prestado pela realização de entrevistas com especialistas, foi possível aferir a situação atual do carsharing em países selecionados. Como elemento comum surge o fato destes serem classificados como mercados emergentes pelo MSCI. Os resultados concluem, na maioria desses países, a existência de um número reduzido de operadores de carsharing, apresentado igualmente um número reduzido de veículos disponíveis associados às operações. Todavia, dos países estudados alguns evidenciaram particular destaque. Igualmente, no presente estudo, e com o respaldo de opiniões especializadas, são apresentados vários fatores críticos de sucesso para o free-floating carsharing. Finalmente, é com base nestes que os nove países foram avaliados individualmente e classificados de acordo com seu potencial de mercado atual usando a Técnica de Classificação Simples de Multiatributos. Observou-se que a Polônia apresenta condições propícias à implementação do free-floating carsharing.

Abstract

Reservations in daily services can improve user satisfaction, and give additional information about the demand patterns to the operators. However, providing reservations to carsharing clients is difficult. While carsharing is especially convenient if it is allowing one-way trips and vehicle drop-off anywhere in the service area (called free-floating), this flexibility increases management complexity because of vehicle stock imbalance. Most of the commercial providers of free-floating carsharing offer reservations under highly restrictive terms, for example only up to 30 min in advance. In this paper, we propose an innovative reservation enforcement technique that allows substantially longer reservation times while keeping the system profitable and achieving high service quality. A simple way to enforce reservations is locking vehicles until the departure time of a client. However, it comes at the cost of idling vehicles that could be used by other users and decreasing the revenue. Our approach, called relocations-based reservation enforcement method (R-BR) combines vehicle locking and relocation movements. It locks vehicles only a short time before the trip departure if a suitable vehicle is close enough due to the natural trip patterns. If no such vehicle is available, a car is relocated from another place. Further, we propose a variable quality of service (QoS) model in which the guaranteed radius around the user within which the reserved vehicle will be placed, and the maximum allowed reservation time before the departure depends on the zone of trip departure. A simulation-based optimization is used whereby the carsharing operation is simulated and optimized using an iterated local search (ILS) metaheuristic for adjustment of service level parameters. The proposed technique is tested on a set of artificial problem examples and a case study of a simulated working day in the Lisbon Municipality, Portugal. Results show that the proposed R-BR method is substantially better than the simple vehicle locking when the constant QoS approach is used and that the devised ILS metaheuristic can further increase the system performance, especially with high trip volumes.