By Staff
July 18th, 2017
BURLINGTON, ON
The move is on to get you out of your car. Use a bike, take transit – try walking.
There are those who will tell you that you don’t need a car – hard to justify that in a city like Burlington. But do you need two cars? Especially if one of them sits in the GO station parking lot. Could you share a car – more on that below.
With the city pushing for more balance in the transportation modes we use one wonders why there hasn’t been a real push to have Burlington transit experiment with different service opportunities.
Having a dial up service that lets people order up a bus that picks them up and drops them off at the GO station for a fee that has a bit of a premium on it seems so obvious to everyone we have mentioned it to – nothing that has the potential to give the public better access to transit service seems to get past the current council.
Jim Smith put forward a solid proposal for a service that would be free to seniors during the off peak hours – council found a way to ignore the advice or take a deeper look at the idea.
The private sector seems to be able to do a better job. There is an organization that is in the car share business that already has vehicles on private property in Burlington in an arrangement with a developer.
Wide range of vehicles available.
There is another developer that gave a small car to a condominium it had built – that arrangement didn’t work out but it is clear that people are looking at different options.
The car sharing business is growing – there is now a group of people, organized as a co-operative, who now have vehicles in nine Ontario cities – Burlington is one of the nine.
They have vehicles hat are pet friendly – vehicles that include a 407 transponder. Gas is included in the share/rental with a gas card in each vehicle.
Known as community car share they offer quite a bit more than an economical car rental service. As a co-operative you become a member and can take part in choosing who the members of the board are and what the corporate policy and rate structure is going to look like.
Matthew Piggott – membership services manager is the contact point.
What impressed us was the range of the vehicle offering. If you need a small van for a couple of hours – they have one. Of course everything isn’t available all the time but at least there is one.
The co-operative organization speaks to the corporate values that drive the company.
Worth looking into. Check it out!
There is a video with all the information you need to make a decision.
www.communitycarshare.ca
Related article:
Jim Young on seniors and transit
