+ BACKGROUND, CHALLENGES AND OBJECTIVES

Background
As people depend more heavily on automobiles and increasingly drive their private vehicles, many impacts came as result, such as air pollution, higher demand for fuel, and heavy traffic congestion. Seoul Metropolitan Government has developed various urban policies to reduce the vehicle traffic congestion created by private vehicles. Recently, the global trend has been toward policies on effective use of vehicles, with one of the best known being car sharing. Car sharing is an arrangement where non-owners can use a car, and this activity is currently quite common in Europe and North America. In the Republic of Korea, public awareness regarding car ownership is changing, and advanced wireless communications, such as smart phones, have made it much more convenient to book and rent cars, opening new possibilities for the car sharing program. With the shifting opinion of car ownership, Seoul has made plans to offer a car sharing program as part of its transportation demand management policy, curtailing vehicle ownership when it is not required and proving the service to those people who are otherwise unlikely to have access to private cars.
 

Challenge
With the implementation of Car Sharing in Seoul, social problems caused by illegal operation of cars and a high accident rate are considered to be biggest challenges from this operation.

Non-qualified users, such as unlicensed drivers, can easily access those cars which causes safety problems. In order to solve this issue, the government is currently establishing a “Driver Identification System” starting from 2017 in accordance with the National Passenger Automobile Transport Business Act.

In addition, the accident rate in 2016 for Car Sharing companies is about 43.7%, which is relatively high compared to the accident rate for short period rental cars. If high accident rate of Car Sharing vehicles continues, the car insurance system under which the Car sharing company is registered, will have a negative income.

Objectives
The Car sharing program aims to improve Seoul’s urban transportation system. The most successful model of the sharing system in Seoul is called SOCAR. As one shared car can replace approximately 16.8 personally-owned cars and parking lot spaces, car sharing has the potential to solve numerous parking and environment-related problems. This project stands to become a representative model of Seoul’s sharing economy as it achieves a perfect collaboration of both public and private resources.

+ ACTIONS AND IMPLEMENTATION

Actions and Implementation
In September 2012, the Mayor of Seoul declared the beginning of the “Seoul: A Sharing City” campaign, which focuses on bringing back a tradition of sharing, which has a long cultural history in the Republic of Korea, to solve social and economic problems in the city. Officially referred as the “Car Sharing Service”, this policy was particularly considered as one of the most important programs in making Seoul a “sharing city”.

For this policy, the Seoul Metropolitan Government recruited contestants, reviewed operating plans and services for citizens, reviewed strategies to promote public interest, and signed a partnership agreement with 2 national private companies. In a public contest held in February 2013, the “Car Sharing” program was named “Nanum Car” which means car sharing in Korean. In an effort to encourage the use of eco-friendly cars, Seoul also initiated an electric car sharing service in May 2012 before the general car sharing service began, but due to delays in making an agreement with the program entities as well as construction of the appropriate infrastructure and system integration, the program officially began in May 2013, 3 months after the official introduction of the gasoline-driven car sharing service.

The car sharing service started with 292 outlets and 492 cars in February 2013. According to the SMG in 2017, 11,700 “Nanum Cars” are currently being operated in 1,366 locations in Seoul, and an average of 6,200 people use them every day. As of 2018, the total number of members of the car-sharing service was about 1.93 million, a significant increase from 0.13 million in 2013. The outlets are located near public parking lots run by the local administrative districts of Seoul or by public institutions, and car rentals are possible at any time all over the city. The plans for the electric car sharing service are to build additional infrastructure such as dedicated parking spaces for electric cars and the installation of electric chargers.

Picking Up/Returning Cars with Smart Key or Membership Card
https://seoulsolution.kr/en/node/3462



 

+ OUTCOMES AND IMPACTS

Impacts and Expectations
The “Car Sharing” policy brought many positive results to the city once it was implemented. According to the 2018 Environmental Improvement Projects of Green Car, a leading car-sharing company similar as SOCAR, provided environmental data that almost 700 tons of exhaust gas was reduced with the analysis on the operation of its electric car sharing service from July 2014 to March 2018.

In addition, it also produced the result of reducing 1.25 vehicles on the roads for one shared vehicle. According to a national survey conducted in March 2017, 35.8% of car-sharing users gave up or postponed their purchase of vehicle after the introduction of the new sharing system, confirming the reduction in traffic demand.

According to the "Special Comprehensive Plan" submitted by the SMG in March 2017 for further expectations, aims to reduce the traffic volume of cars inside Seoul's Hanyang City Wall (6.7km2) by 30% until 2030. Several proposals are being announced to achieve this goal including Nanum-cars. By 2020, it aims to replace 200 internal car-sharing vehicles with 100% battery electric vehicles, which will reduce greenhouse gases.

>> Parking lot space for Seoul City Nanum-cars

>> Nanum Car Electric Vehicle Charging system

+ REPLICABILITY AND SCALABILITY

Replicability and Scalability
Many systems for share mobility have been introduced and one of those is the car sharing program. This system has spread in various global markets with a dense number of urban population. Since the Asia-Pacific region has shown an increasing urban population growth and a high demand for transportation infrastructure, this system could be introduced to solve those challenges.

+ BUDGET AMOUNT

Budget Amount
Non-budget project (promoted  through business agreement with private business operators)