Munich aims to create 1,600 car-sharing spaces

The green-red-governed Bavarian state capital Munich has announced a massive expansion of the stationary car-sharing offer and plans to provide up to 1,600 public parking spaces for shared mobility. This emerges from a draft resolution of the newly created Mobility Department to the City Council. Additionally, approximately 200 so-called mobility points are to be created by 2026, where not only vehicles but also bicycles or e-scooters can be rented.

The project is part of the city's climate protection strategy, within the framework of which traffic is to be emission-free by 2035. Of the 1,600 parking spaces, the administration proposes reserving a larger portion for stationary car-sharing providers such as Stattauto, but also allocating part to various providers for simultaneous use. The city leadership aims to reduce the number of private cars, but intends to offer alternatives for mobility.

Among other measures, prices for resident parking permits and parking in licensed areas as well as craftsmen permits are to be generally increased. The municipality cannot independently increase the general parking fees because the CSU-governed Free State has set an upper limit of a maximum of 1.30 per half hour, which has been at 2.50 euros per hour in the old town for 20 years. 

Car-sharing could significantly reduce the number of cars

The Mobility Department counts sharing among the so-called "extended environmental alliance," after public transport, cycling, and walking. Therefore, the stations should be reachable within a maximum of five minutes on foot. The mobility points, in turn, are to be located near public transport stops. The previously sparse offer of shared mobility at the city outskirts is also to be improved in this way. The specific locations are now to be defined in cooperation with the district committees.

According to Munich's Mobility Officer Georg Dunkel, one stationary car-sharing car can replace between twelve and sixteen private cars, while for freely placed “free-floating services” with parking in defined quarters, the ratio amounts to between three and five cars. The city's chief mobility officer predicts that 8.3 percent or 400,000 of the routes previously traveled by cars or motorcycles per day could be saved.

In addition to car-sharing, the officer also wants to revive and expand on-demand offers and ride-pooling. The City Council saw the project positively across all factions and, from the perspective of the ruling Green-Red coalition, as a "big step towards a traffic turnaround," but would like to see the offers integrated on a single digital platform. Recently, however, the number of registered cars in the city had increased in line with the nationwide trend, here by another 24,000 vehicles to approximately 875,000 vehicles.