As carsharing becomes increasingly popular throughout the world, it would be of interest to understand better the underlying characteristics of the trips made by members when they use the cars. To date, few studies have reported carsharing trip details. This paper presents a methodology to analyze three components of a station-based carsharing member's journey: the locations of the stops, the attributes of the trips, and the characteristics of the trip chains. The method is based on the processing of Global Positioning System traces collected onboard car-sharing vehicles; a 5-min stop criterion is used to divide the trip chains into separate trips. The case study involves the Communauto system in the Greater Montreal area, Quebec, Canada. The study shows that carsharing members make more trips within their trip chains than typical car owners do. However, those trips are shorter and are often made for purposes other than work (shopping or visiting, for example). Members tend to maximize the use of the cars during the rental period (the members are on the move up to 50% of the time for short trip chains and 30% of the time for longer trips).
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