General Road and Highway Discussion

[danbrotherston]

Our favourite cynical Dutchphile cyclist is back with another vide on the values of car sharing. I'd like to see more growth in this area in Waterloo Region:

WR has been pretty progressive when it comes to car sharing. At least historically.  Community car share now Communauto has been running car sharing in the region for quite a while, and AFAIK WR was one of the earliest small to midsized cities to get car sharing, possibly a decade before it became relatively common. Communauto is still the largest carshare company.

I will say that the key to supporting car sharing is:

1) Density - there must be enough people in walking distance to a car to support it, and that walking distance is very short
2) Supporting non-car commuting - car sharing only makes sense when people don't commute by SOV. 
3) Increasing the cost of parking - if people are already forced to own extensive amounts of parking because it's built into home ownership and work place costs, they are much more likely to own a car.

In that regard, midsized cities like ours really struggle to support car sharing, even here, it's really only feasible in a few places in the city, so I think we're doing well in supporting that.