hankyoreh

By Jung Tae-woo, staff reporter and Huh Ho-joon, Jeju correspondent

As the word spreads about car-sharing - services through which a variety of people use a single car - the concept is spreading into diverse areas of life. An increasing number of people are opting not to own a car but rather simply to rent one when necessary.

On June 12, the Hankyoreh’s Jeju correspondent met graduate student Kim Yo-han, 28, on the campus of Jeju National University in the Ara neighborhood of Jeju City. Kim said that he had just returned to school after doing some volunteer teaching. Since April, Kim has been borrowing a vehicle from a car-sharing company once or twice a week and using it for about two hours.

“I like how I can use a car at a time and place that are convenient for me,” Kim said. “It’s really useful when I have to go a long way to do my volunteer work.” This time, Kim used the car for about two and a half hours and spent 15,000 won (US$13.30), including gas.

“If two or three people use the car together, it becomes so much cheaper to get around.”

Car-sharing is also used by startups and other small companies for getting work done. The companies of Hello Nature, a company in the Gangnam district of Seoul that sells environmentally friendly farm products, use car sharing about 50 times a month. The company explains that they typically make use of the service when visiting food producers in other regions or meeting with marketing firms. “When you rent a car overnight, the price is similar to standard rental companies, but if you go somewhere close or just use it for three or four hours, car-sharing is much cheaper,” said Park Byeong-yeol, 38, the president of the company. “I would say it has helped us save us at least half of the price of renting cars.”

In a bid to help reduce the parking crunch and traffic congestion in downtown Seoul, Green Point Consortium (Green Car) partnered with SoCar in January to create the “Share Car” system. Share Car operates 486 cars in 292 parking lots (including 86 public parking lots in Seoul). As of Jun. 2, Share Car had 77,970 members. 89% of the members are residents of the greater Seoul area (including Seoul and Gyeonggi Province), but the number of members who live outside of this region is increasing.

An average of 503 people use the service each day, which represents a 40% increase (140 people) from the 363 average daily users when the service began three months ago at the end of February. The average time that the cars are used each day is 4 hours and 18 minutes. 43% of users are in their 20s, 38.5% in their 30s, and 15.6% in their 40s. In order to aid the growth of Share Car, the city of Seoul has made its public parking lots available and has cut the parking fee by 50%.

Aside from Share Car, the number of people who are sharing electric cars is also on the rise. Seoul signed agreements with four companies LGCNS (City Car), Korail Network (YouCar), Korea Car Sharing (Han Car), and KT Rental Car to secure a supply of eco-friendly electric cars. Starting in May 2013, they have started sharing 184 electric automobiles.

Car sharing is rapidly expanding to more regions. Green Car has brought car sharing to 27 cities: Goyang, Gwacheon, Gwangmyeong, Gwangju, Guri, Gunpo, Gimpo, Bucheon, Seongnam, Suwon, Siheung, Ansan, Anyang, Yongin, Uijeongbu, Paju, and Hwaseong in Gyeonggi Province; Asan and Cheonan in South Chungcheong Province, Cheongwon in North Chungcheong Province; and Daegu, Daejeon, Busan, Sejong, Incheon, and Jeju.

SoCar, which got involved with car sharing by setting up parking zones in 40 locations on Jeju Island, is expanding to Seoul and other regions. Clients in Jeju are mostly university students and men in their 20s and 30s. A representative with SoCar said that 60-70% of users are residents of Jeju, with the remainder being tourists and other visitors.

Choe Ji-young, 37, from Paju, Gyeonggi Province, who visits Jeju once a month with her friends to hike on an oreum (the name locals on Jeju use for the volcanic hills on the island), picks up a vehicle from the parking lot as soon as she arrives at Jeju International Airport. Choe said that car-sharing on her recent trip to Jeju Island cost her 33,000 won for renting the car, or slightly above 50,000 won including gas. Since she was joined by three friends, the cost for each of them was less than 20,000 won.

“The cost of insurance is already included in car-sharing vehicles, so the only extra thing we have to pay for is gas,” Choe said. “It’s convenient since we don’t need to meet any employees and we can unlock the car door using our membership card.”

A very literal form of car sharing is taking off in Northern Europe, with drivers borrowing each other's cars. In South Korea, drivers use businesses to rent cars as needed. The law currently prohibits renting anything other than work vehicles for a profit.

The car sharing companies that Seoul City Government is supporting would seem, at first glance, to be car rental agencies. But Lee Su-jin, who heads the city's transportation demand management team, said the project serves the public in many ways.

"It allows people to use [a car] as much as they need without owning one themselves, which reduces transportation costs for families," she said. "And the more car sharing people do, the fewer cars there are on the road, which reduces traffic jams in the city. In particular, it promotes the mobility of the disadvantaged, since low-income people now have inexpensive transportation for when they have to go to the hospital."

Hong Ji-young, who heads the marketing team at SoCar, explained that drivers can borrow cars for 30-minutes increments.

"All you have to do to book one is visit the website or use a smartphone app to find the location of a nearby car and the time when it's in the parking zone," Hong said.

The biggest complaint among users is that they have to return the car to the place where they borrowed it. Lee explained the reasons for this policy, saying the cars "would all end up being driven from the periphery into the city center if we allowed 'one-way cars' that people could park somewhere else. It also works against the goal of reducing traffic, and there would be additional costs because someone has to then move the cars to a garage somewhere else."

Observers have called car sharing a clever way of cutting traffic, parking needs, and pollution. Programs are in place in around 1,000 cities in 60 countries around the world. In Europe, systems have sprung up linking communities with public transportation. In the US, expansions in response to booming market demand have led to successful private models like Zipcar. Local and national governments overseas have also provided various benefits to individuals and companies sharing cars, including public parking spaces and discounts, funding, and even co-investment.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]