Electric station cars in the San Francisco Bay Area

Station cars offer transit passengers seamless connections between rail transit stations and their destinations, providing some of the on-call, door-to-door advantages of the private automobile. They also provide midday mobility, which is particularly important to transit patrons heading to suburban jobs. As light, two-seater electric vehicles, station cars can reduce air pollution and energy consumption by increasing transit ridership and substituting for park-and-ride trips. This article reviews experiences with implementing station car demonstration programs in the San Francisco Bay Area. Field tests reveal station car users like and feel safe driving small electric vehicles to and from rail stations, but few are willing to pay enough to cover full costs. The early stages of a pilot program in the city of Emeryville showed that station cars were used more for non-commute than commute purposes and have the potential to significantly induce work-trip modal shifts to rail transit. In addition to introducing bi-directional programs that share station cars at both the work and home ends of commute trips, vehicle co-ops and instant rental car technologies could make station cars economically viable. Over the long run, however, the degree to which station cars become commercially available will Likely rely on market-based principles gaining wider acceptance in America's urban transportation sector.