Regulations ‘chill’ car-share in Toronto
Toronto parking regulations prompted Car2Go to suspend its operations in Canada’s biggest city by the end of the month send a “chilling signal” to car-sharing services eyeing or already in the market, according to an expert on the sharing economy.
Car2Go said Thursday it had been rendered “inoperable” by a city-run pilot program arriving in June that will forbid its use of almost 10,000 parking spaces, where users usually pick up or leave the service’s vehicles.
The pilot program would also charge the service permit fees of $1,499.02 per vehicle and force Car2Go to immediately relocate their cars when two or more carsharing vehicles have been left on the same residential street.
“This is not the result we were expecting and to say we are disappointed would be a huge understatement,” Car2Go CEO Paul DeLong said in a letter sent to users on Thursday. “We hope that one day, the City of Toronto chooses to establish a legal framework that makes true freefloat carshare possible in the same way that dozens of other global cities have.”
Car2Go, owned by Germany’s Daimler, has been in Toronto since early 2012, when it required users to pick up and park cars in designated “Green P” lots. It started allowing them to leave and grab a vehicle from any legal spot on streets in 2016. The company operates in 26 cities around the world, including Calgary, Montreal and Vancouver.
Mayor John Tory expressed disappointment that “Car2Go has chosen confrontation over collaboration.”
Sunil Johal, policy director of the University of Toronto’s Mowat Centre and an expert on the sharing economy, said he worries it sends a message to companies Toronto isn’t as open to car-sharing innovations as other cities, which have reached agreements with such services.
“This is the kind of thing the city should be looking to welcome and promote, rather than shut down or put in place parameters that make it almost impossible for the programs to work successfully,” he said. “It comes at a time when we are trying to think about ways to move people away from car ownership.”