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Station Area Master Plan – Transportation Context
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Car Share and Autonomous Vehicles
Car Share
Car share is a model of car rental where people rent cars for short periods of time, often by
the hour. They are attractive to customers who make only occasional use of a vehicle, such
as those who commute to work by transit, as well as others who would like occasional
access to a vehicle of a different type than they use day-to-day (e.g. a pick-up truck for
moving a large piece of furniture). While there are no car sharing companies currently
serving Morgan Hill, other parts of Santa Clara County and much of the Bay Area are served
by Zipcar, and Oakland and San Francisco are served by Getaround. The factors that can
make a particular location attractive to a car sharing company include proximity to public
transit and other alternative transportation modes, high population/housing density, low
automobile ownership, an affluent population, difficult parking, a mix of land uses, and a
local partner/champion(s), such as government, transit agency, property owners, or
developers. In the future, more of these factors may be present in Morgan Hill and create
greater opportunities for car sharing. This could reduce the need for privately-owned
vehicles and reduce the number of parking spaces needed to store them.
Autonomous Vehicles
Many companies are currently developing automated and autonomous vehicle
technologies. Initial technologies include automatic braking, collision avoidance, and driver
assisted parking with the goal of ultimately creating fully autonomous or driverless vehicles.
The use of autonomous vehicles is likely to increase in future decades, after this technology
has matured and is in more widespread use, and liability and security issues have been
satisfactorily addressed. Autonomous vehicles have the potential to facilitate or improve
business models of mobility as a service, including carsharing, e-hailing, ride hailing
services, real-time ridesharing, etc. all contributing to reduce the need for private car
ownership.
One of the biggest anticipated effects of autonomous vehicles will be reduced parking
demand and therefore the need for fewer parking spaces, as the vehicles will be on the
roadway system constantly moving passengers or goods instead of being parked.
Therefore, the need for future parking supplies should be monitored to understand how
autonomous vehicles affect parking demand and new parking facilities should be designed
as flexible spaces to accommodate other uses when not needed for parking vehicles.