April 27, 2016

ULI Next Million Series: Impacts of Car Sharing

Gordon Price: The Urban Land Institute BC hosted another session in their ‘Next Million Series’ on April 19 – this one on “Car Sharing and Changing Parking Requirements.”  Here are some of my notes.

 

SYLVAIN CELAIRE,  Modo:

  • A million more people by 2040 in Metro Vancouver means another 600,000 vehicles, based on past growth.  The average yearly distance driven would be 4,680 km.
  • It costs $9,500 a year to own a car.  Modo costs about $1,500
  • Each two-way car share replaces 9 to 14 cars.
  • Developers can save on parking about $140,000.
  • The biggest obstacle to car sharing is lack of understanding in how it can work for the user.  For the developer (according to Brad Howard of PCI) it’s how to incorporate a car-sharing vehicle into private space, like a condo’s parking garage.

 

ADRIAN BELL, Demand Management,  Translink

  • A Road toll of up to $3 equals a reduction of traffic up to 15 percent
  • There is a huge growth industry in mobility as a commodity, likely to begin with fleet management.
  • Self-driving fleets could remove the need for on-street parking and 80 percent of off-street parking

 

OBSERVATIONS FROM THE PANEL

  • Parking relaxations and consumer amenity are key realizations
  • Simple agreements are needed.  Developers avoid complexity.
  • Swiss model of car share at transit stops can be an extension of transit service, paid for through one system.
  • Three to four trips per week makes sense for car sharing.
  • The car-sharing demographic tends to younger and older. As millennials age with families, their kids will see car sharing as the new norm.
  • Insurance contracts are still out of date.
  • Big question of Automated Vehcilces is whether people will self own or share.

 

BIG TAKEAWAY

  • While the number of vehicles could be 600,000 for the next million people, it need be only 300,000.

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Comments

  1. 300,000 still sounds like an awful lot. We should be aiming to reduce the total number of cars even as population grows. They’re mostly just noisy, expensive, inefficient, dangerous and city-killing machines. We could probably thrive with 20% of the current fleet.

  2. What would R. Buckminster Fuller have said about car sharing?

    The status quo is absurd. Watch a thousand vehicles go by. How many have more than one person? 10%? That is anti-ecological and anti-social. It’s wrong. It’s no fun. Some of the worst times of my life have been spent commuting. Existential, screaming, stressed.

    What are most vehicles doing most of the time? They are parked – for free. That is illogical (sorry, that’s Spock). Driving solo, esp., as a commuter (the dirtiest word in transportation), should be looked upon as smoking in church.

    We’ve been sold a bill of goods on the joy of vehicle ownership – it sucks – and it costs a fortune. Disclosure: I’ve always had a car – the current one, bought new for cash, is now over 23 years old. We are a family of four, so it is useful, but we only put around 1,000 kms on it per year. The big expense is insurance. On a per km basis it makes no sense.

    Even though we live just a 4 min walk to the Skytrain, we practically never use it – and the loser cruiser? Hate those things, much as I appreciate that most are electric. Have never been a transit user – not in the DNA.

    Bicycling is another story. The bicycle, esp. one equipped with fenders and panniers, is the ultimate driving machine. And this idiotic so-called helmet debate is an attack by the bully mentality of motorists aided by helmet companies funding dishonest studies so that they can make a fortune selling plastic and styrofoam. BTW, we’re all bullies when we drive.

    Do you come to a full stop at stop signs? I do. At least 2% of the time. Eat? Smoke? Speed?Screw with your sound system? Or are you one of those a holes with a cell? Motorists are mayhem. Poison.

    Hello fellow bully motorists: You might be hostile to cyclists and bike lanes – that which is good in our cities, but trust me, we’re all much better off with butts on bikes than on car seats – in front of you.

    R. Buckminster Fuller lived before the age of computers and Uber apps. Guaranteed, he would have embraced car sharing.

  3. Good to see TransLink getting in on car sharing and even self driving vehicle fleets. All we need now is more rapid transit and less wobbly buses, stick in traffic just the same as cars. Have you ever seen an ad, by any developer anywhere, that advertised their condos with ” excellent bus service nearby ” ? It is such a no-brainier: to get folks out of their cars we need rapid alternatives.

    $3 roadtolls ? How about $20 in rush hour on certain bridges like Lionsgate ?

    With additional CO2 charges and road tolls will we see tax relief elsewhere ? Was this discussed, or only ever increasing fees and taxes ?

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