In order to promote car sharing throughout Vienna, the Vienna City Council made a decision Sept. 18 to allow Zipcar to offer dedicated parking spaces for shared cars in order to promote the city's slogan "Use cars, don't own them."

“The key to using our car-sharing model and making it easy to plan ahead when hiring a vehicle is fixed parking spaces,” says Zipcar Austria CEO Christof Fuchs, who added that 85% of reservations booked on its website (www.carsharing.at) are made 24 hours in advance, and that 16% of Austrians signing up for car sharing give up car ownership entirely and then use the shared vehicles 31% less than their previously owned car.

“The goal is to offer such parking locations to all Viennese to boost their motivation to use car sharing,” said City Councilor for Transportation and Vice Mayor Maria Vassilakou.

According to the announcement, Zipcar now has more than 700,000 customers worldwide. Zipcar acquired the Austrian car sharing company, Denzel Mobility CarSharing, in July 2012.