User Characteristics of an e-Carpooling System at UMONS as Part of a Smart District Concept

Carpooling is a mobility concept that has the potential to effectively reduce the single occupancy trips with passenger cars, and thus energy consumption as well as traffic congestion, while coupled with electric vehicles (EVs) and intelligent transportation systems (ITS) can contribute to the smarter and more sustainable use of transportation networks as integrated part of smart cities. However, in practice, the success of carpooling systems has been limited by psychological barriers related to the level of trust for sharing a ride with strangers, and the necessity for convergence of schedules and trips for ride-matching. To this end, the present work advances the concept of a university-based carpooling system with EVs (e-carpooling), as a means of restricting the access to a closed community with a critical mass of users having the same origin/destination. In particular, this paper reports on the results of a preliminary survey conducted at University of Mons (UMONS), Belgium, in order to explore the characteristics of this user community with respect to the concepts of carpooling and electro-mobility. The results of the survey not only reveal the user preferences for the adoption of the proposed system, but also provide some useful insight for the implementation of the e-carpooling concept in the city of Mons.