New article on car sharing on
www.openfile.ca
http://www.openfile.ca/toronto-file/pitch-when-will-car-sharing-reach-burbs
Relevant info:
Autoshare adds Vic. Park ( I believe at Danforth) on Sept 1, 2010
Zipcar adds Bayview/Sheppard this fall, and is new to Fairview Mall.
Zipcar boss suggests we will see cars at Vic Park/Eglinton and in general in Scarborough and Etobicoke within 12 months.
Full text below:
Four years after Zipcar landed in Toronto and 12 years after AutoShare began the trend, car sharing services are starting to make slow inroads into the most car-dependent parts of the GTA — too slow, for some residents.
Touted as a green alternative to urban car ownership, car sharing allows members to rent vehicles by the hour. However, access to the service is still very limited in Scarborough and Etobicoke, let alone in Markham and Mississauga.
Of 350 Zipcar vehicles, about 260 are in the downtown core, south of Eglinton Ave. Like AutoShare, the company clusters its pickup locations near major transit routes, a policy that ensures each site is economically viable and used frequently, representatives say.
“Car sharing works well in dense, walkable and transit-rich areas where people don't need a car to get to work, or live most of their life,” says AutoShare president Kevin McLaughlin. “Thus the location of most T-Dot shared cars along the subway or streetcar lines.”
The good news: both services have expanded locations to older suburbs that have seen increased transit access, such as North York. AutoShare has a car at Don Mills Rd. and Sheppard Ave. and six locations north of Highway 401, with one car as far afield as Markham. A Victoria Park Ave. location is scheduled to open Sept. 1.
Zipcar has a six-car “superpod” at Yonge St. and Sheppard Ave., three cars at York University and two new cars at Fairview Mall. The company also plans to put new cars at Bayview and Sheppard Aves.
“We’re very open to the concept” of expanding suburban locations, says Michael Lende, Zipcar’s Toronto general manager. “We want to be accessible to everybody.”
In the past four years, the number of car-share users has gone from 2,500 to “probably over 25,000,” McLaughlin says.
The success of the model has clear benefits for the community. Industry studies show that just one shared car takes roughly eight privately owned vehicles off the road. Also, a car-sharing membership cuts each motorist's carbon dioxide emissions by an average of 60 per cent annually.
Both companies say population density and transit accessibility will continue to determine the location of new car pods. Where new transit lines go, so goes car sharing — eventually.
Luckily for suburban dwellers, transit and density don’t have to be present at the same time.
One way to get car-sharing into suburban areas, it turns out, is to build condos. AutoShare’s most northerly location is at the Majestic Court luxury condo complex at Highway 7 and Warden Ave. in Markham.
The density provided by the growing condo hub near Victoria Park and Eglinton Ave. also enabled Zipcar
to install two cars there two years ago, even without a rich downtown-style transit presence. It now plans to station cars right in the parking lot of one new development nearby, Lende says, although he declined to identify it by name.
McLaughlin’s company is expanding. He wants to put AutoShare cars in Mississauga; partnering with the city or another agency, either to help with promotion or startup costs, would help that happen. AutoShare had to pull its location in New Toronto, in Etobicoke, when it wasn’t profitable. A car must bring in $1,000 a month just to cover its own costs, McLaughlin says.
A key factor is getting drivers to use the cars on weekdays, not just weekends.
Zipcar will serve Toronto’s eastern and western regions better in the future, Lende says.
“You’ll probably see cars in Etobicoke within the next 18 months, as you’ll see expansion in Scarborough as well,” he says. “We are going to expand as the city expands.”
