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Car-share comes right to the doorstep of city halls

August 21st, 2014 · 7 Comments

I was roaming around the city website looking at open bids when I came across the RFP for the next three years of car-share services at the city. That prompted me to make some phone calls to find out how much it was used and if it resulted in getting rid of any city cars.

As it turned out, it did. It also turned out that other cities around the Lower Mainland are also turning to car share as a way of saving money or getting their young, car-less employees around. My story.

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  • John Geddes

    OK, full marks to the cities in the lower mainland for this initiative.

  • Jay

    Weird that this topic gets almost no comments. With driverless vehicle technology just around the corner, car sharing has the potential to drastically change how cities operate. There’s a pretty good 7 part series in Forbes on the topic if anybody’s interested.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/22/fasten-your-seatbelts-googles-driverless-car-is-worth-trillions/

  • KSK

    Not sure this is true:

    “Typically, those cars are driven by commuters to SkyTrain stations in the morning and away in the evening. They’re also heavily used on weekends. But in the middle of the workday, they tend to sit – so now Surrey city employees are using them.”

    Modo, unlike Car2Go, does not allow one-way trips so the trip must begin and end at the same point. So Modo members are paying hourly rates all day so their Modo car will be outside the Skytrain station when they return after work? Not likely.

  • boohoo

    Where’s the fun in talking about something successful? You might have to give credit to someone 🙂

    Car sharing is great though, my work has it, I use car2go a lot. It was a major reason we dropped our second car.

    Good thing to with yet another increase in ICBC rates coming…

  • Warren

    Car sharing is fantastic. I’ve been a member of Modo for many years. It allows our family get by with 1 car instead of 2. I like car2go’s usage and parking plans, but they need a larger car option.

    I don’t think people truly understand the cost of owning and running a private vehicle. There are so many hidden costs that make car sharing a huge savings.

  • IanS

    “Car sharing is fantastic.”

    I love the idea. If I ever convince my wife to let me sell the car, I would definitely use one of the care share programs.

  • Bill Lee

    @Jay // Aug 22, 2014 at 3:40 pm
    ” Weird that this topic gets almost no comments. ”

    Modo and other such car share items was heavily discussed in

    Can you guess which parts of Vancouver get the most parking complaints? I don’t think so May 9th, 2014 · 115 Comments
    http://francesbula.com/uncategorized/can-you-guess-which-parts-of-vancouver-get-the-most-parking-complaints-i-dont-think-so/

    at around 40 and after.

    I chimed in with prices and such about comment 68

    I was somewhat surprised to see the number 11,000 memmbers. Talking with a Modo rep at one of the street festivals this summer, I was told 7,000.

    I was not surprised to hear that some downtown condo developments used Modo stations as a “greenwashing” inducement to buy, but the cars were rarely used.

    The new Director, Nathalie Baudoin (Chief Executive Officer) might bring new life to the co-op, but with 30 staff and an aging fleet of vehicles, they are up against tough obstacles.

    Have stations at City Halls (Port Moody, others) increases range and visibility though most onlookers won’t go into the plan.

    And as a Co-op, unlike all the other shared-car companies, I was curious about the voting, as all members should go to the Annual General Meeting and vote and participate in the Co-Op.

    It does “cost” $500 to join Modo co-op. And they buy used cars of varying size and capacity, a few vans and trucks, distributed at stations (to which they must be returned) concentrated around the Kitsilano, False Creek, Downtown areas. (see the FAQ modo.coop/ask )

    But the meeting numbers were small, about 200 members. Voting numbers are also low.

    So it can be easily corrupted by staff, as with Mountain Equipment Co-Op with 2.5 million memmbers, 8000 online voting and 50 people at AGM.
    We can also include the provincially controlled credit unions, such as VanCity, Coast Capital and so on which are not really member run anymore.

    [ The Province really should get into the forced re-democratization of Co-ops and Credit Unions for all the tax and cost advantagest they recieve. ]