Six operators, a fleet of over 2.000 cars (40% of the national total, of which 10% electric), 250 registered only with Enjoy, an average of over 8 daily rentals with a peak of 13 last April, the first scooter sharing in Italy inaugurated this summer. Milano confirms Italian capital of shared mobility: a journey that began in 2001 with the experimental initiative of Legambiente (at the beginning there were 3 cars) and grew under the Pisapia council, which with a tender in 2013 opened up to free floating, i.e. to private companies.
In just a few years, experimentation has become a consolidated reality: "85% of the Milanese are satisfied with the service", explains Transport Councilor Pierfrancesco Maran. Yet it's not all roses and flowers: it was discussed on the occasion of the Collaborative weeks, the Milanese appointment dedicated to the sharing economy, in which it emerged that if it is true that with the car sharing more than one out of 10 Milanese (about 12%) has already given up on the private car (same percentage as in Berlin) and that another 8% intends to do so in the future, however 80% of citizens still need to be convinced that while appreciating the novelty, he hasn't completely cleared it. “Milan has 51 cars per 100 inhabitants, while in 2000 there were 65”, reveals Maran: a clear improvement (50 fewer cars registered in the last 9 years, according to ACI data), especially compared to the national average which is the highest in Europe with 1,64 inhabitants per car (in Milan 1,93 ), but still far from the 35 cars per 100 inhabitants of Barcelona and Lyon.
The reasons? Coverage of peripheral areas, integration with the rest of the mobility system (in particular local public transport) and cost. The first is actually growing rapidly: as of 2015, car sharing covers a further 34 municipalities in addition to the city of Milan of what was once called the hinterland, now properly called the Metropolitan Area. However, this has created the problem of evening users: “Those who – explains Gianni Martino di Car2go – use the shared car to get home after an evening out, when public transport is no longer there. The following morning, however, they move again with public transport, leaving an army of cars in decentralized areas and posing the problem of availability in the centre, where there is much more demand”.
Thesis confirmed by an analysis of Twist, the third operator by number of vehicles in Milan (about 500): the vast majority of rentals take place in the centre, but conversely a clear majority of releases take place in the peripheral areas. “It also happens that our operators go personally to recover them”, says Paolo Guaitamacchi, president of the Twist consortium. Car2go made a different choice, imposing a small but controversial surcharge for those who leave the car outside the central area: "A strategy that is bringing results", says Martino. Instead, he proposes a possible solution Sharengo, which has a fleet of 250 all-electric cars and which offers free travel to women at night (2/3 of the car sharing public is male, under 40 and uses the car on average for 20 minutes and 6 km, with a peak in the evening hours): "Connection hubs with the large railway and underground stations are needed - suggests Luca Mortara of Sharengo, the latest player to arrive on the market on 22 June -: to put it simply, parking that allow the use of the shared car to be linked to that of other public transport”.
Integration with the local transport system is also necessary at a logistical and tariff level to avoid, as is happening now, Car2go users declaring that they use it 51% of the time for night movements: that is, not as a substitute for the private car, but as a substitute for public transport or a taxi. "The theory according to which car sharing must be placed in an intermediate pricing between public transport and taxis - Mortara continues - is unfounded: much more competitive prices are needed to convince that 80% to give up the private car". Currently the rental, depending on the operators, costs in any case more than 20 cents per minute: according to Sharengo's calculations, very large (they do not consider parking and any fines), a private car costs around 250 euros a month if you use it for 6.000 km a year.
"Calculating the times and the average speed in a city like Milan - explains Mortara - car sharing should therefore cost at most 11 cents per minute, less than half of what happens now”. Sharengo has already moved forward and is launching the special rate of 6 euros per hour (which corresponds precisely to 11 cents per minute). The challenge for the institutions is therefore threefold: to establish new rules that are the same for everyone after an experimentation phase that has affirmed the phenomenon; create tools for interconnection with the rest of city mobility; put the operators (who certainly cannot cry misery: the annual fee for the use of the land and also including maintenance services is only 1.100 euros per vehicle) in a position to lower prices for consumers.
It is a revolution worth making and which is not, as they would say in Milan, just a question of lifestyle: in the Lombard capital the policies for sustainable mobility (Area C in primis but also car sharing and public transport) launched starting in 2012 have eliminated 25 million car transits in the city center in three years. A reduction of around 30%, with an average of 38 fewer cars per day in circulation in a substantial portion of a city that is all in all small in size. Reducing traffic, as is known, means reducing harmful emissions: the result of all this is not only a new social trend but a -38% of fine particles in 2014 compared to 2010 and -59% of black carbon.
