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Montreal’s primary car-sharing company is expanding west and boosting its fleet significantly.
Communauto announced Monday it will expand its flex-based service in Lachine, whereby cars can be taken without advance reservation and parked anywhere on the island in specified zones. It will also add stations in Dorval, Cartierville, Montreal North, Rivière-des-Prairies and the Bois-Franc neighbourhood of St-Laurent.
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This marks significant growth in the west. At present, there is only one station for Communauto cars in Dorval and no flex arrangement for its cars in Lachine. The new zone will be situated around 21st Ave. between the lakeshore and St-Antoine St.
With the move to the suburbs, Communauto will add more minivans to the fleet in the coming months. A total of 1,100 cars will be added, including 85 Kia Niro electric cars and 70 Kia Carnival minivans, bringing the fleet’s overall number to 4,800. The company will start with 900 station-based vehicles, with a goal of adding the remainder by the summer in time for high vacation season. The goal is for 200 flex-based vehicles to be added by the fall.
The Plante administration said the expansion is good news because when spaces for car sharing are added, the option quickly becomes popular with local residents. Communauto claims that each car it places on the road prevents at least 10 from being added to the overall number of cars in the city. The service is now available in 17 of the city’s 19 boroughs (the exceptions are Pierrefonds-Roxboro and Île-Bizard—Ste-Geneviève), as well as in Laval, Longueuil and other Montreal-area cities.
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“What we have found is that the more mobility options we offer, the more people take them up,” said Sophie Mauzerolle, the city’s executive committee member in charge of mobility.
Communauto founder and CEO Benoît Robert said the expansion of the fleet will also help current users find cars more easily. However, he cautioned that people shouldn’t expect to always have a car available in the areas where the service is most popular.
“We have to see it as a service that is complementary to other modes of transportation,” Robert said. “If you expect a car to be in front of your house at all times, you’ll be disappointed. But it’s not a problem to walk 200 or 300 metres to get a car, and that’s what we usually see where the membership is most common, which is in the Plateau-Mont-Royal.”
The service is growing by more than 20 per cent per year, he said.
Roughly 38 per cent of households in the Plateau are Communauto members. In Ville-Marie, it’s 33 per cent, while the third-highest percentage of users is in Outremont, with 23 per cent of households. Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie and Sud-Ouest round out the top five, with 21 per cent and 19 per cent respectively.
Robert said the service has to work progressively, by first adding stations and watching the demand grow.
“It’s useless to put the cars in an area where there’s no demand, because the cars just stay there,” he said. “We have to wait to see a tipping point in order to add more cars.”
Communauto spokesperson Marco Viviani said the company intends to add cars at every REM station that has a parking lot around it. There are 26 stations planned for the electric light-rail system, and all but three — the Marie-Curie, Trudeau airport and Griffintown stations — are slated to be online this year.
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