Thanks to Mobility, the city of Zurich saves around 8,000 parking spaces

Without Mobility, Zurich would have even greater transport and space problems. An independent report shows that car sharing in the city saves almost 8,000 private cars as well as the respective parking spaces.

The congestion-relieving effect of car sharing is well known. However, the Mobility Cooperative wanted to know for sure and had the effect independently investigated for the first time. To this end, the consultancy firm BSS Volkswirtschaftliche Beratung conducted a survey of members in cooperation with the University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland (OST).

You can find the summary of the study here.

The individual pictures are shown here.

The result: On average, each Mobility car replaces 18 private cars. Study co-author Fabiana Kappeler says: "According to their own assessment, the respondents would own significantly more cars without Mobility. Mobility's car sharing offer means that parking space can be saved on a massive scale - space that is then available for other uses."

The avoidance rate of private cars in the city of Zurich is higher than the Swiss average: Here, each Mobility car replaces 21 private cars. The cooperative's total number of shared cars in the city yields almost 8,000 vehicles and parking spaces that are not required. This corresponds to an area of up to 100,000 square metres - or six times the size of the Sechseläutenplatz square. Car sharing as part of the mobility solution can therefore help the city of Zurich to further reduce traffic pressure and create additional space. This applies in particular in view of the "Urban Space and Mobility 2040" strategy, with which the city is aiming for a groundbreaking shift in land use at district level. Private motorised transport must thus make way for sustainable forms of mobility and more green spaces.

How can this effect be illustrated? Using photos. To this end, roads were photographed in Switzerland's largest cities. The cars that were lost in the city in question thanks to Mobility customers were then removed from these streets and replaced, for example, by green spaces. 

Starting with Anwandstrasse in Zurich, other cities will follow soon. In Zurich, for each Mobility car 21 private cars are no longer being used.

You can decide for yourself which street you prefer to live in.

"For me, the results of the study are a huge incentive for further expanding our offer," says Mobility CEO Roland Lötscher. "If we want to overcome the mobility challenges in Switzerland, we need a significantly higher proportion of car sharing in the mobility mix." To achieve this, Mobility intends to work even more closely with cities, cantons, companies and upper-level flats in future. "Together, we want to make sustainable mobility as easy as possible."

The report also looked at the level of motorisation of households: In the cities studied, the number of cars per 1,000 people is on average at least twice as high as in households with a mobility subscription. Fabiana Kappeler says: "Thanks to the car sharing scheme, many Mobility customers do without a private car completely. This has a direct impact on mobility behaviour: People who do not own a car are more likely to travel by public transport, bicycle or on foot. This also means a reduction in individual motorised transport."