ICLEI member city Helsinki (Finland) has set up a new arrangement with two local companies to support peer-to-peer car rental. Citizens can now offer their cars for rental, as an alternative to paying for expensive parking spaces during the long cold winter. Car-sharing has become increasingly popular among European authorities, and Finland is now considering new ways of supporting peer-to-peer car rental throughout the country.

The fact that the initiative is online makes it easy to manage bookings and track the cars through GPS. Both companies in Helsinki will start their service in phases. The first one allows a meeting between the car owner and renter to exchange the key, and the second initially concentrates on a specific area or block. It is intended that later in spring 2012 the entire service will function via smart phones and the internet.

Since the concept of shared cars has gained popularity in Europe and USA, Finland has now raised a discussion on providing free parking spaces to the car owners as an extra incentive for them to offer a private car for peer-to-peer use in the near future.

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