Student behaviour towards Free-Floating Carsharing: First evidences of the experience in Madrid

Abstract

Abstract Mobility in large cities is changing. Congestion and space problems and the growing concern for the environment make the citizen begin to abandon the private vehicle and look for alternatives of transportation. More flexible carsharing systems, such as Free-Floating Carsharing (FFCS), have broken into the markets of European and US cities, experiencing a surprising growth in demand. Smartphone applications enable the user to search and book a car close to his geographical position within a service area defined by each FFCS company. Users can take and leave the cars freely in public parking spaces inside the service area. Flexibility is, therefore, the main attraction and the most revolutionary feature of FFCS systems. While there is an extensive literature about the impacts of traditional station-based carsharing systems on public transportation and sustainability, little work has been done on FFCS systems. This paper contributes to the limited existing literature with an analysis of the behaviour of university students towards FFCS systems, taking Madrid (Ciudad Universitaria Campus) as case study. University students are a likely user population group, so their mobility patterns and transportation preferences have been studied. The methodology has been based on two survey campaigns conducted with a one-year time slot (2016: 186 valid questionnaires; 2017: 213 valid questionnaires). The results clearly show how the quality attributes of FFCS depend strongly on the maximum distance and time accepted by each user to walk and wait in the search of an available car.