I love win-win solutions, and car sharing is a perfect example of such a solution. In its simplest form, car sharing allows a group of people to share a group of cars. Because individually owned cars sit idle most of the time, car sharing allows a small number of cars to serve a large number of people.

Many cities around the U.S. have such programs already. A list can be viewed at: http://www.carsharing.net/where.html.

Typically, the shared cars will be in a small parking area serving a group of homes. People pre-enroll in the program and are issued an access card. The access card provides entry to the car and it also provides for billing for usage of the car.

Billing is typically done by the hour. It is essentially a car rental system. Unlike with typical car rentals, there is no waiting in line, the cars are within a short walk of home, and you only pay for the actual time you use the car.

For many households, such systems make car ownership unnecessary. In other cases, it eliminates the need to own more than one car.

Such a program makes housing more affordable for two reasons: First, it saves the high cost of owning a car, allowing more to be spent on housing. But an even bigger saving comes from the land that is saved for parking cars.

The biggest cost of housing in our area is the cost of land. A parking space and driveway can easily take as much land as the living space for a person. Recently, the Sandpiper development in Goleta was denied because of a lack of parking. While we do not wish to take a stand on the merits of the project, a car-sharing program could be a way to deal with both parking and the affordability of the project.

The Sierra Club, of course, is interested in the issue of resource conservation. The most precious and finite resource, again, is land. Cars consume as much as half of all land in urban areas such as ours. That land is paved and impermeable to water, creating loss of ground water and increases in flooding.

While car sharing does not eliminate demand for land for roads and parking at destinations, it reduces land used in residential areas.

Car sharing also reduces the need to produce as many cars. Producing a car consumes as much energy as driving the car about 10,000 miles.

Also, since all expenses of a shared car are paid by usage, there is an incentive to use alternatives when they are available. When a person has paid a large sum up front for car ownership and insurance, there is little incentive to use alternatives. In general, car-sharing works best with clustered development rather than sprawling development, which also brings environmental benefits.

Other car-sharing programs are possible as well. In one such program, a shared car is kept at a residence at night and on weekends. The resident drives the car to a transit station and takes the transit to work. Another user might arrive on transit and borrow that same car to drive to work nearby.

The car is then parked at the workplace and is available for others to use for errands during the day from work. While this program may be harder to adapt to this area, large work sites served by transit, such as UCSB, might make use of it.

However it is done, car-sharing provides these benefits: more affordable housing, smaller household expenses, less resource consumption, less land paved over and more incentives to use transit and other alternatives, which in turn conserves more resources. Truly a win-win solution!

Robert Bernstein is conservation chair, Sierra Club – Santa Barbara Group