City CarShare

City Carshare

Type	Non-profit
Industry	Carsharing
Founded	2001
Area served	Northern California
Website	Official page

City Carshare was founded as the first carsharing program in the San Francisco Bay area, and remains the only non-profit program in the metropolitan region.^[1] It provides its members with the use of fuel-efficient vehicles by the hour.^[2]

History

City CarShare was the only carsharing program in the San Francisco area from its founding in 2001 until 2005.^[3] The organization began with a fleet of 12 lime green Volkswagen Beetles and 850 members. The original pricing was a $300 deposit with a $10 monthly fee, in addition to fees of $2.50 per hour and 45 cents per mile (28 ¢/km) driven.^[4][5] City CarShare expanded to include locations in Oakland, Berkeley, and Palo Alto in 2002.^[6] In 2004 City carshare began providing vehicles to the city of Berkeley, in order to help the city reduce emissions. The city sold off cars from its fleet in favor of using shared vehicles.^[7] By 2005 ABC 7 reported that the organization had saved more than one million gallons of gasoline since its founding,^[8] and the company saw a twenty percent rise in membership.^[9] At this point, City CarShare was the largest non-profit car sharing program in the United States.^[10]

In 2006, University of California, Berkeley produced a study showing that City CarShare prevented nearly 25 million pounds of carbon emissions a year from entering the atmosphere.^[11] In 2011 City CarShare was one of eighteen organizations to form the North American CarSharing Association, the world's largest.^[12] City CarShare was one of the lead organizations in the new association, which had 100,000 members upon its launch.^[13] In 2011 City CarShare also partnered with the city of San Francisco to provide on-street parking exclusively for City CarShare vehicles.^[14]

The Clean Fleet Report has named City CarShare one of the ten best car-share programs in the United States, mentioning its focus on electric cars as one of the reasons behind this.^[15] The fleet was specifically implemented with Mitsubishi_i-MiEV electric vehicles.^[16] The use of electric vehicles in the fleet and around the city led the City of San Francisco to institute the installation of electric-vehicle charging stations in the downtown area.^[17] The company also runs the CommunityShare program for low income individuals and the AccessMobile program that provides wheelchair accessible vehicles.^[15]

People

City CarShare was founded by a group of Californian transportation activists in the San Francisco Bay area, with the help of non-profit organizations in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco.^[18] The first official member of City CarShare was San Francisco native Elizabeth Sullivan.^[19] The CEO of the organization is Rick Hutchinson, who has attended the signing of new legislation with California politicians in support of making car-sharing easier and more cost efficient.^[20] City CarShare has also worked with city officials to debut new sustainable transportation initiatives, such as the Montreal-based Bixi bicycle sharing system.^[21] Hutchinson became CEO in 2005, replacing CEO Larry Magid, who had held the position since 2002.^[22]

Dash pilot

In September 2013, City Carshare launched Dash, a three-year pilot carsharing program in Hacienda Business Park, in Pleasanton, California. The service will be provided with 30 Scion iQ EVs, which are part of a 100 electric car fleet built by Toyota to be field tested in the U.S. and Japan.^[23]

References

External links

• City CarShare