Brussels, 03/02/2003 (Agence Europe) - Last week, the European Parliament organised, in Brussels, a symposium for presenting the first results of the MOSES project (mobility services for sustainable urban development) which aims to promote car-sharing throughout Europe and the candidate countries. Despite many advantages (mainly of the economic and environmental kind), the car-sharing system is far from being adopted within the EU. The MOSES project, which runs until April 2004, with a budget of EUR 3 million (jointly funded by the "City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage" part of the European Commission's programme for research into the environment and sustainable development) aims to identify the obstacles to car-sharing and to create incentives for developing the scheme. Several towns are involved in the project: Bremen, London, Stockholm, Palermo, Turin, Genoa, Bucharest and the Wallonia region. Brussels will be part of the scheme in March 2003.
Car-sharing is a car-hire system that has existed since the end of the eighties and which allows users to reserve different kinds of vehicles at any moment, via Internet or telephone. In addition to the fact that it is economical for the user (who only pays for the sporadic use of the vehicle), this alternative to a private care presents many advantages. Christian Patterman, Director for the Environment at the Directorate General for Research at the Commission, considers that car-sharing can have a positive impact on the environment without negative consequences on competitiveness. The officials in charge of the environment and construction of the Senate of Bremen (one of the towns that are the most involved in the project) consider that around 10% of private cars could be replaced without restricting mobility and that the distance covered by cars throughout the EU could be reduced by 30 to 50 billion kilometers annually, which would be the equivalent of energy savings of 6 to 8 million tonnes of CO2. Furthermore, the requests for parking areas could be reduced by 10% which would allow better use of urban infrastructure. Only 100,000 people use car-sharing in the EU at the present time, essentially in four countries (Germany, Austria, Netherlands and Switzerland), which is far from the potential. Still according to the Senate of Bremen, in October 2000 there were 43,000 car-sharers in Germany out of a potential 6 million. Given all the advantages of car-sharing, the Commission must tackle the underlying causes for its low development, Mr Patterman said. The symposium allowed one of the obstacles to development of the system to be underlined, namely: the lack of communication towards potential users. Furthermore, participants insisted on the need to integrate car-sharing in the local and regional policies (such as urban development) and to promote intermodality with the other methods of transport and with public transport in particular thanks to special prices or information services. Finally, the need to establish European norms in this connection was stressed by German Social Democrat Bernd Lange, MEP.
The ambition of the MOSES project is to reach 12,000 additional users by the end of 2004. This figure may seem minimal but it is nonetheless very ambitious compared to the results obtained so far and given the need to change the way people think and behave, Mr Patterman said.