Thought Patterns
by Emanuel
June 30, 2008 at 20:59
filed under economics, rant, Vancouver
Tagged Vancouver
I’ve made mention about my membership in Vancouver’s original non-profit car sharing Co-op before and, although the very commendable news that the City of Vancouver will be using the Co-op’s services for their business use is a few weeks old, I felt compelled to write about more because it simply makes so much sense. The move will replace 35 City cars with 20 Co-op vehicles which will be available to members evenings and weekends, boosting the 225 vehicles owned by the 4,400 members of the Co-op, and reduce costs for the City.
The common sense displayed by the City does not only make a lot of sense for myself, as some very unlikely candidates tend to support such initiatives as car-sharing, although not necessarily in the co-operative form. One of them is Ford Motor Company’s current Chairman, William Clay Ford Jr, great-grandson of Henry, who has been known to express the desire to position the company as a purveyor of mobility and can be quoted as having said:
The day will come when the notion of car ownership becomes antiquated. If you live in a city, you don’t need to own a car.
I agree with him since it’s the very basis of the idea of car-sharing. You can also think of car-sharing this way:
A library is an efficient system for sharing a large collection of books. The books cater to most interests and needs, and are available on a first come – first serve basis. Once you have a library card, you’re able to take out any book you want and there’s a deadline when you’ll need to have it back for someone else to read. Using the library, instead of buying the book yourself, saves you money, reduces clutter in your home, and spreads out the environmental impact of producing that book – the trees cut, the energy, the ink – among a larger group of readers. In fact, the environmental savings can be even greater if having a library leads to fewer books being produced in the first place!
With car sharing, we have a large collection of vehicles (cars, trucks, mini vans) that are available to registered drivers on a first come – first serve basis. You choose the best car for your trip, then bring it back for the next person to use. Using a shared car saves you money over owning a car yourself, and reduces the number of vehicles cluttering up your streets at home. At the same time, it spreads among many people the environmental impact of manufacturing each car – the material composites of the frame, the energy used, the paint – and can even reduce the number of vehicles being manufactured.
This decision by the City of Vancouver is not the first action undertaken by City officials to encourage the use of car-sharing services as they have already implemented other win-win actions such as ‘a by-law enabling Developers to reduce the ratio of parking required in Multi-residential applications where car sharing is a featured amenity to the building. The by-law currently allows for a reduction of three parking spaces for every co-operative car (and associated parking stall) the Developer provides.’ Another by-law, which is a great perk for Co-op members, is that Co-op cars are allowed to park in any permit-only zone anywhere in the city. Parking does not have to be frustrating!
I also want to insist on the Co-operative aspect of the car-sharing I am a member of as this also helps ensure the objectives are aligned with the best interests of the members and, in this case, their city. Another great example of a successful co-operative in the MEC, Canada’s leading co-operative retailer with 2.8 million members. The Seven Principles of Co-operatives are a such:
In an era of so much discourse about sustainability and about acting local to have an impact on Global issues, such principles are important for me and make a big difference between non-profit car-sharing organizations and for-profit car-sharing companies, which are of course a decent alternative.
Of course, car-sharing is not for everyone and that’s OK. Your commuting patterns must allow for car-sharing but you can also make lifestyle choices to reduce your dependency on driving. For myself, I was annoyed by the fact that my car would be sitting in front of the house 98% of the time, as I felt that it was a great waste of resources. Furthermore, if savings are of interest to you, you can use the simple on-line calculator to determine how much, if any, would your switch save you based on the current pricing.
To quote ‘Long Emergency’ controversial author James Howard Kunstler to end this post, the perhaps too far-reaching conclusion that ‘the end of the fossil fuels era will force a return to smaller-scale, agrarian-focused communities’ is nonetheless worth considering when making lifestyle choices. For further reading with regards to the Future of Energy and less doom-and-gloom scenarios, I direct you to last week’s edition of The Economist.
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