Ride Shares & Car Cooperatives

The first link below proposes a smart but somewhat involved national rideshare program to get cars off the road, not necessarily people. The second link is to an article in Out There that I wrote about car cooperatives. Both tackle an engrained mind-set—that we need to have access to our cars at all times during the day to drive to wherever we want to go. This is going to be changing whether we like or not.

Planning for the co-housing project, we have discussed a car-share program among three families where we would sign-out for the car in advance of needing it, similar to the “office car” in urban businesses. The rest of the time we would rely on public transportation, electric scooters, bicycles and walking. Radical idea.

The potential developers for the project looked at us like we were absolutely insane when we proposed this. They also questioned the unseemly task of having to walk outdoors from a garage and into a house. All of us live with this “condition” now and have not thought twice about it before, but now we are up against questioning banks, developers and City regulations that require 1.5 parking stalls per unit equaling 5 spaces. It is ridiculous to eat up precious urban green space with parking, especially when we all have children.

http://www.communitysolution.org/rideshare.html

http://www.outtheremonthly.com/index.php?art=archives/jan06/parking