How Car Sharing Can Make Your Community Stronger
How many punchbowls does one extended family or friend group need? I started asking this question after going through the season of life where I and everyone I knew were getting married and registering for gifts. When I opened my very own punchbowl set at a bridal shower, I felt like I was really an adult, ready for all manner of hosting occasions that may arise. At other people’s showers, as I watched them open their very own punchbowls, ornate cake stands and various other fancy pieces of partyware, it hadn’t yet occurred to me that we probably didn’t all need our own. But sure enough, 15 years into marriage, I’ve used my punchbowl a handful of times, max. I can hardly remember the last time I saw anyone else’s, either! I see my mother-in-law’s out at Christmas, full of her signature eggnog, but that’s about it. I could easily get rid of my punchbowl (which takes up a not insignificant amount of space in my pantry) and just borrow hers when I need one.
You’re probably wondering why I’m going on and on about punchbowls while my fellow columnists are talking about parking, road design, community and municipal finance. Bear with me; I am going somewhere with this.
Last week, a flurry of excited texts zoomed around amongst my neighbors, because two new Peg City Car Co-op vehicles had arrived, marking the co-op’s official expansion into our neighborhood. Truly local car-sharing was something many of us had been eagerly awaiting, and now the day had finally come!
So what is car-sharing? Essentially, it’s a highly flexible, self-serve car rental service. Depending on the service, you can use a vehicle for anywhere from a few minutes to a few weeks. Some have a pool of “free-floating” vehicles that can be picked up and dropped off anywhere within a designated zone, while others have fixed locations where vehicles must be picked up and returned. They commonly bill a rate that includes time, mileage, gas and insurance. There are lots of different car-sharing models, from cooperatives like the one here in Winnipeg to private companies like Zipcar and even peer-to-peer models like Turo.
For my own family of five, which has not owned our own car for several years, having car-sharing right in the neighborhood will be a total game-changer. We can walk, bike and take transit to meet most of our needs, but occasionally, a trip comes up where using a car is the best option. Until now, the nearest car-sharing vehicles were a 25-minute walk or even a bus ride away. But now, accessing a co-op vehicle is as easy as walking down the street or just around the corner.
For seniors that we know, the timing was welcome. Knowing their driving days would not last forever, they were excited that this development would let them avoid buying a new vehicle to replace their current one, which was aging, too.
And for several other one- or two-car families we know, they were at the point of sometimes needing an extra vehicle, but not so much that they wanted to commit to all the extra cost and maintenance.
When we joined the car co-op three years ago, it was partly on principle. We wanted to demonstrate that there was a demand for car-sharing in our neighborhood and that we were willing to be patient. That patience has now been rewarded, and with the busy end-of-school and summer seasons upon us, convenient car-sharing couldn’t have come at a better time. With membership giving us access to a wide range of vehicles — from sedans to minivans to pickup trucks to cargo vans — we love that we can get the vehicle we need when we need it and that we don’t have to deal with it when we don’t.
The need for a car is just a reality for most people in Canada and the United States, and it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Even in a highly walkable neighborhood, there will be times and situations where vehicles are wanted or needed. But, where we can, we should be using all possible tools to give people alternatives to driving as the primary and default mode of transportation. Car-sharing is one of those tools.
The way I see it, the ability to share a car (or in the case of Peg City Car Co-op, a fleet of 130 of them!) is kind of like the ability to share a punchbowl, only with much higher and more consequential stakes.
On a personal level, car-sharing has been a helpful tool to increase my transportation options without having to own the proverbial punchbowl. On a public level, car-sharing can foster more productive land use because car-sharing and parking go hand-in-hand.
UCLA professor Donald Shoup has studied parking extensively for the past 20+ years and manages to make the topic downright fascinating (seriously, if you get the chance to hear him speak, you won’t regret it!). One statistic I learned from his book "The High Cost of Free Parking" is that, on average, cars are parked about 95% of the time. (Data from the UK is similar: A 2021 study found that the average personal vehicle is only driven one hour of the day and sits parked the other 23. The number has stayed roughly the same since 1995.)
Studies have found that a single car-sharing vehicle has the potential to take as many as 15 privately owned vehicles off the street. That’s 15 vehicles that all require parking for, on average, 23 hours a day! That might not seem like a big deal across a city, but at the block level, removing 15 regular cars from competition for street parking isn’t nothing.
Car-sharing can play a vital role when it comes to private parking, too. Here in Winnipeg, the co-op has already established itself as a key enabler of many residential developments, whether they’re infill, retrofits or brand-new builds. Here’s the secret: According to the co-op, “Winnipeg is one of only two cities in Canada that allows developers to reduce their parking requirement if they provide carsharing services at their development.”
Mandating less parking for a given building can literally make or break the project — for instance, if the costs of including parking just won’t pencil or the site physically can’t accommodate parking space. Peg City gives us an example of the latter case:
[Our] first ever in-fill agreement was at 511 River, the old Christian Science Church. Due to its preservation status, the building could not be torn down, yet there was insufficient parking to make the project feasible. The addition of two Co-op cars … allowed the planning department to back the parking reductions and make the project possible!
These on-site car-sharing spaces are a valuable amenity for the residents of the building — property managers can opt into the co-op’s Enterprise program, which allows all residents to use the co-op without buying a full membership share. The benefit of car-sharing vehicles extends to the surrounding neighborhood, too.
Forward-thinking towns and cities are reducing and eliminating costly parking mandates more than ever. This is great, but it can trigger a period of transition where real or perceived parking pinches crop up. Car-sharing can help mitigate these growing pains.
And even in places that still have rigid mandates, granting parking exemptions in exchange for car-sharing spaces is a positive step toward devoting less land to parking.
So, while I and others love car-sharing for many reasons (such as the ability to pool resources, save money and reduce my carbon footprint), I think one of the most important reasons that towns and cities should encourage and incentivize car-sharing is the direct and positive impact that it can have on parking — and thus in helping us make better use of land and bolster walkability in neighborhoods by enabling more housing.
Emma Durand-Wood likes walkable cities, front porches, street trees, bumping into neighbors, riding her bike, downtowns, and any excuse to check out a new coffee shop, bakery, or shop. A Winnipegger by choice, she lives in Elmwood with her husband and three children. You can connect with her on Twitter @emmaewood.