Car sharing market grows as alternative to transit
Posted March 25, 2015 8:51 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – All the attention surrounding the transportation funding vote has made people focus on either transit or driving.
But there is another option to taking public transportation or owning your own car. More people are turning to car sharing, which has emerged as a very viable alternative.
Car2Go is perhaps the biggest one, operating in Europe and across North America.
Location manager Chris Iuvancigh says their growth in this market has been quick.
“We’ve seen steady increases in our membership. We’ve expanded now to North Vancouver and expanded Richmond. Our home area now is 120 square kilometres. And we’ve more than tripled our fleet in the last three years so I would say it’s a very popular service.”
The company has 750 of the iconic smart cars now in use around the region, tied with Seattle for their largest North American fleet and third overall.
Iuvancigh says there is a cross section of users.
“Urbanites, families, anyone with one or zero cars who need access to a vehicle or another vehicle to do a spontaneous trip. Many times they’re going that first or last mile to the SkyTrain or transit. So, it’s a lot of multi-modal and spontaneous trips.”
He calls it a perfect complement to transit.
Modo too has seen a big leap.
The company is the elder statesman of the region’s car-sharing market. when it comes to the Vancouver market.
Company’s CEO Natalie Baudoin explains its 18-year-journey.
“Modo launched in 1997 in the West End with just three cars and has been growing ever since. We now have close to 400 vehicles and 13,000 members in 11 municipalities throughout Metro Vancouver and even Victoria.”
She says everyone from young people with no cars to single car families who need a second car use the service, sometimes even weekly.
“They want to have access to cars and they don’t want to own it. The maintenance, the parking, the insurance, all of that is a bit of a headache.”
She says the four Vancouver car sharing companies likely have somewhere north of 1,500 combined vehicles.
