Vancouver’s city council will review staff recommendations next week on how to regulate where car sharing services can park vehicles.
According to a CBC article, members of the council will even consider looking at allowing these services to park vehicles at city meters for free.
At the moment, services like Car2Go and Evo, are only allowed to park in areas that are reserved zones for resident permit parking and resident parking.
According to CBC, a city report said that this would be fine if cars are visiting homes, but not when visiting commercial areas. It noted, right now, these cars are not allowed to be parked curbside at a meter.
City staff are recommending that these cars are allowed to do so and have free stopovers at metered parking spots for up to two hours, CBC reported. It added that while the driver isn’t paying for the parking spot, they would be making it up by paying for the rental vehicle.
Other cities that have regulated car-sharing vehicles in this way include Calgary, Seattle and Portland.
Currently, 34 percent of adults in Vancouver use a car-sharing service and CBC reported that the report wanted to encourage the use of more electric vehicle. The article said that another recommendation would be to allow users that have rented electric and hydrogen vehicles to end their rental period and drop of vehicles at meters. The renter would then get a 50 percent discount to the company that the car was rented from.
While this could result in a loss of parking revenue for the city, city staff recommend that it would only issue 250 permits per company over five years for more “zero-emission one-way car shares,” CBC reported.
The meeting will be on July 9th.
It is worth noting that some residents in Vancouver may or may not be in favour of these regulations. In June, a Vancouver-man wanted there to be a city limit to the number of car sharing vehicles that are parked in residential parking spots.
That particular resident was not able to ever find a proper parking spot because car-sharing services were taking up all the room. He lives a block away from the Pacific National Exhibition, which hosts an annual 17-day summer fair and other events hosted in that specific area.
These regulations could relieve car sharing services from having to park in residential areas and park in more commercial areas.
Source: CBC
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