[sustran] Wow! The Swiss!!!

Eric Britton eric.britton at ecoplan.org
Fri Nov 6 21:29:01 JST 1998


This is really worth a gander and a thought. Rail + public transit
+ shared cars + a country-wide mobility capability, all in one
handy affordable package.

As they put it in French " Un abonnement demi-tarif pour le train
et 1000 véhicules Mobility, que vous pouvez réserver 24 heures sur
24 et aller chercher immédiatement. A 700 emplacements dans 300
localités dans toute la Suisse. Dans les gares, près de votre
domicile ou de votre lieu de travail. A la campagne comme en
ville."

For more in French, http://www.cff.ch/pv/mobility_f.htm  In
German: http://www.cff.ch/pv/mobility_d.htm  Sorry, no English on
this at the present time.

If you ponder it a moment, this is in many ways a not unexpected
thrust of development on the part of the rail folks.  After all,
transportation is increasingly and above all logistics, and 30
years ago the rail groups at the leading edge already began to
come  to terms with the huge number of empty rail wagons (and
containers) they and their other international colleagues had
sitting around doing nothing most of the time (when not altogether
lost).  So they used a bit of technology and were able to figure
out what was where, which in pretty short order allowed most of
the operators to cut their car fleets in half and more, offer
better service, do less deadheading, cut costs, etc. So, they got
good at it. And of course carsharing is itself almost pure
logistics.

Still, whatever the historical or technological reasons for it,
this is really a terrific bit of pioneering and cross-modal
collaboration and one can only hope that it will prosper and
spread.


Eric Britton

PS. Should we be discussing this? And hey! Let's cross over these
two carshare lists and make them into a more coherent structure
and reference point.  Don't you think?

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