Some friends of ours recently sold their car and became a member of Vancouver’s car co-op. This idea has appealed to me for years, but I’ve never done anything about it. Now we’re seriously considering taking the plunge. Why?
- We live and work downtown, and only use our car two or three times a week.
- There’s a co-op car literally outside the door of our building. It would take us less time to leave by the lobby and climb into the co-op car than it does to drive our car out of three floors of parking garage.
- There are six cars and a minivan within three blocks of our apartment.
- If and when we build a house on Pender Island, we’re definitely going to need a car (or, you know, a big, old pickup truck). Now’s the time to be car-free.
- We’ve donated money to environmental organizations, but we should probably put our mouth where our money goes, or something like that.
- We could rent out our parking spot to offset the cost of the co-op car program, thus saving us a sizable chunk of change in gas, insurance and servicing every year.
- This decision is easier to make in the dog days of summer than in rainy November.
- I hate driving.
I’ve got several friends who are in the co-op, and only have good things to say about it. What do you think? Good idea? Crazy idea?
DarrenBarefoot.com 
I’m a member of a similar service in Chicago. Before selling your car for a month or two, go online and simulate reserving the car the moment you decide to drive somewhere with your existing car. Many times you might not be able to get the co-op car because others have it. It takes some pre-planning to reserve if cars are booked frequently.
Definitely sounds like a good idea. Mel and I have no plans of getting a car in the near future – we live downtown, I work downtown, and there’s a million busses to UBC for Mel. We’re not even a members of the car co-op (the need for a car doesn’t come up except when we travel), but I’ve heard really good things about it.
Don’t forget that a bus pass is now tax deductible too if you decide to ride go that route as well.
When I lived in Yaletown, I got a charge card for Yellow Cab and used that instead of a car. My monthly cab bill was about $200. About the cost of insurance alone.
And I didn’t have to drive, pay for parking, save money for maintenance, and all that stuff.
I highly recommend the Cooperative Auto Network. I had an old Volvo wagon that tended to break down at the worst possible times, so I needed something reliable to get me to the office on the Sunshine Coast (and work paid me mileage, anyway). I used them my last year or so in Vancouver, and this is what I liked best:
1) Online AND phone reservations. One time I found myself on the Skytrain and needing a car quickly, so I phoned and found a car by the next Skytrain station. Their online booking system is easy to use, too.
2) Variety of vehicles. I could get the type of car for the purpose of the trip, eg. a minivan for moving furniture or transporting a bunch of people. I also liked driving the Beetle, so I booked that from time to time. I booked a truck when I needed one.
3) I was considering buying a hybrid car, and I was able to test the Prius out myself. It was already located near where I lived.
4) Convenience. They cluster the cars according to where the members are, so if you live downtown there are plenty of options. CAN car #1 was in my own building’s parking lot.
The major drawbacks are related to planning. You do have to plan ahead if you absolutely need a specific type of car for a specific time. And if you run overtime this can be problematic if the car is booked for the next slot. But it’s not meant to replace car rental, so if you need flexibility and unlimited mileage, rent a car instead of using CAN.
If I didn’t have a baby, I’d ditch the car. (It is far too difficult to time cabs and CAN around installing/removing a car seat and nap times and what-not.)
My last car’s undercage and pipes and what-not actually rusted out because I didn’t drive it enough. The water pooled in the pipes and rusted through. $800 just to fix that.
I was without a car till late 97, when late night hours at job in Richmond a long way from a bus stop forced me to get a car. I took a cab from my place in Kerrisdale/Dunbar for the 3 months prior to that, having bussed and walked up till then. Sometimes I couldn’t get through to the cab company or it would take half an hour to get a cab. I think CAN is a way better solution.
We have been members of CAN for a number of years. I agree with Gail’s comments, the advantages and disadvantages. For us, CAN is part of our transportation, including bus and taxi, and of course walking, depending on the circumstances. Our biggest disadvantage is that we live outside Vancouver, on Bowen Island. The nearest Co-op car is located in the West End in Vancouver, requiring extra bus travel to pick up and return the car.
If only there were more people on Bowen joining CAN, we could have a co-op car on Bowen Island and possibly in Horseshoe Bay, making things more convenient. I am still working on recruiting members. Hello, fellow Bowenians out there who have old cars or two cars – how about getting rid of a car and joining the Canadian Auto Network ?!
It seems the biggest hurdle is that nobody wants to give up the convenience of jumping into their car and drive off at a moment’s notice. Another very big hurdle is that the outlying areas are built around cars and malls.
Go for it, Darren. You might even want to add a bus pass (in case you have a bicycle, you can also bring that along on the bus).
I’m English, I don’t think we have any schemes like this around. I don’t drive so it makes no odds personally.
The gist of this idea thogh, is that you pay a monthly/annual fee to have a share in the use of cars from a pool? That sounds a pretty cool idea for people that don’t need a car for day to day work. I’ve understood the concept of this properly?
Best of luck if you decide to go with it Darren. It sounds like a great idea, but I guess you’ll only really find out if it’s right for you, if/when you try it.
I was a member of CAN for years. I loved having easy access to a wide variety of vehicles, and I loved being able to have a car just when I needed it. The online reservation system was incredibly handy. Others have mentioned the good things about CAN, so I’ll focus on some aspects membership that were not so good.
The down side is the annoyance factor. When a car was vandalized, I got blamed, because I was the last person who had used that car. Never mind that the vandalism wasn’t consistent with a crash of any sort, or that I have a perfect driving record. I just came home one day to find a puzzling message in my voice mailbox, saying that hey, good news! the repairs for the damage I had caused would only cost X dollars! What? In the end, the co-op decided not to make me pay after all, so at least there was that. But still, that was awfully annoying.
That experience serves to illustrate an important part of being a CAN member: you will get blamed for the state of the vehicle (mess, new dents, any damage whatsoever) unless you document that damage on your trip report, thereby indicating that a previous driver is responsible for the damage. It’s really annoying to be blamed for mess when you are fastidiously tidy, all because you didn’t notice or report candy wrappers in the trunk, and the next driver did report it. To avoid this problem you just report everything, which is fine, except that I found I spent a significant amount of time documenting every little thing about each car. It’s either that, or take your chances on the blame thing.
If you choose to join the co-op, always allow extra time and take extra money with you. Sometimes you’ll show up to collect your car and find that it’s just not there. The previous driver has returned the car to the wrong place, is late, or whatever. I learned to book each car for 30 minutes extra at the beginning of my booking, because I had to allow time for plan B, which was taking a taxi if the car wasn’t where it was supposed to be. I also booked an extra thirty minutes at the end of each booking so that I would have time to clean the car properly. This was time spent cleaning up other people’s mess and documenting previous damage in the trip report, but that was better than getting blamed for that mess.
I could go on for rather a while, but this gives you the idea. For me the breaking point was the email from CAN informing me that members with businesses could send CAN an advertisement, and all these adverts would be included in a monthy mail-out that would go to all CAN members. So great, they were going to spam us all. Nuts to that.
I’ve actually developed my own car-co-op of sorts! Having sold my “Black Beast” and having my Lexus turn into a submarine 1.5 years ago, it just didn’t make any sense to live downtown and pay the high insurance rates to use a car *maybe* once a week. Now, my best friend parks his car at my place (he lives only 3 blocks away), and in return for second-dibs on it (he uses it about as much as I do) I keep the car full of fuel, do light maintenance, and clean it regularily. We’ve been doing this for about a year now, and it’s worked out fabulously!
And, on that rare occasion when M wants to drive (he can’t drive standard) we walk literally across the road to Alamo and rent one for next to nothing! We haven’t missed having our own car and all the costs associated to it at all.
My wife, Andrea, and I recently published a book entitled Urban Camping: A Testament to Living Without a Vehicle. Andrea and I have lived in Calgary since 1997. In November 1998, we sold our only vehicle. Seven years and two children later, we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Our book is called Urban Camping but we don’t live in a tent – we pay rent! ‘Camping’ refers to our simpler lifestyle and to the adventure that living without a vehicle brings. We carry our groceries home, walk to the shopping mall, and strive to keep our life “uncluttered.” We’ve trekked through downpours, fog, snowstorms, hail, freezing temperatures, high wind chills, and stifling heat. We are regularly asked if we’re tourists because of the large backpacks we wear around the city and are rarely seen without.
Dr. David Suzuki calls our book “a very important model for other people.†Urban Camping describes our life in Calgary (population one million) but its principles and practices of less vehicle-dependence can be applied to most urban settings.
We have self published our book and as such are responsible for all that is required in bringing it to the public. If you believe that our book and our example are worthy then please pass on this information so that more people have the opportunity to find out about our book. You may check us out at http://www.urbancamping.ca. We need help. Thank you.