Half of Dutch willing to consider car-, bike-sharing

Almost half of Dutch are willing to consider exchanging their car for a Mobility as a Service subscription, according to a study by PanelWizard commissioned by ABN Amro among a thousand Dutch people. But for this to be a viable option, the supply of shared cars, bicycles and scooters must increase considerably, the bank concluded AD reports.

Shared transport is considered one of the main solutions to fight traffic jams on increasingly busy roads. It was an important proposal in the Delta Plan Mobility that an alliance of the ANWB, NS and 23 other organizations released earlier this week, though their proposal for road pricing got most of the attention in the media.

Currently the Netherlands has a poor supply of Mobility as a Service. NS' public transport bicycle is the most popular such service, with 750 thousand subscription holders. Other services including Greenwheels, Car2Go and Amber have a total of some 40 thousand shared cars on the market. Only 15 percent of Dutch are now open to car- or bike sharing, and only about 7 percent actually make use of it.

But the researchers found that the willingness to use car- and bike-sharing services will increase if the supply improves. If there is sufficient supply, 45 percent of Dutch said they would exchange their car for a transport subscription. They want to pay around 200 euros per month. For this amount users want to be able to use all forms of shared- and public transport: bus, train, shared car, shared bicycle, shared scooter. Ideally, users want to receive a personal travel plan every day via a smartphone app, which shows available means of transport, as well as real-time advice on ideal routes, traffic jams and the like.

ABN Amro expects that all in all, shared transport has a potential growth market of up to 14.4 billion euros per year. "Shared transport has a lot of potential if the transport offer can compete with your own car or other means of transport in your possession in terms of convenience, confidence and price", Franka Rolvink Couzy of ABN Amro said to AD. Specifically, providers of public transport and shared transport must be linked to each other and IT systems and payment methods must be further coordinated. The bank mentioned Finland and the United States as places where this is already happening.