darren Posted June 8, 2018 Share Posted June 8, 2018 Car2go has had a mixed history in Toronto. When it started out, it had a deal with the Toronto Parking Authority where Car2go vehicles could park in any TPA "Green P" lot, and certain on-street parking locations. In 2017, they started an un-sanctioned "free floating" pilot on their own, allowing Car2go members to park nearly anywhere on city streets in the Home Zone (downtown), as long as it wouldn't get the car towed. They ate the cost of thousands of parking tickets. Many city streets have a wait list for parking permits, and many residents hated losing spots on their streets to car-sharing vehicles, even though several families on a street could be Car2go members, actually freeing up parking spaces. Car2go had been petitioning the city for an official "free floating" pilot project like they have in just about every other city where Car2go operates, allowing them to park on city streets with a special permit they would have to purchase for every vehicle. The city responded with an amended and restrictive plan that had a permit fee far higher than in any other city, and restrictions on which streets the cars could be parked on. And no more than one car could park on a street. The company decided that these restrictions were too onerous, and so on June 1, they pulled up stakes and left Toronto entirely. I suspect they were trying to call the city's bluff (or vice versa) and they decided to screw over their members, instead of finding an alternate solution, such as going back to the old TPA partnership. It's a sad development. Car2go was one of the BIG reasons I decided to walk away from my smart ED lease, and go entirely car-free in the city. Quote Important Update car2go is being forced to suspend operations in Toronto as of May 31 due to Toronto City Council’s decision to pass a heavily amended free-floating carshare pilot that ultimately renders our service inoperable. For nearly six years, we’ve tried to collaborate with the City of Toronto to establish an effective regulatory framework for free-float carshare. Despite our best efforts, City Councillors passed a pilot that prevents us from providing service to our 80,000 Torontonian members once the pilot takes effect June 1. Read more here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smartzuuk Posted June 8, 2018 Share Posted June 8, 2018 Truly sad.... Ontario is such a mess in general. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stickman007 Posted June 8, 2018 Share Posted June 8, 2018 I think its a tough sell for N/A to give up their cars in general - let alone giving up their trucks and SUVs. I dare to say that Edmonton is another example of a "mess" with the city investing money on their poorly thought out transit system and bike lanes. Not that I have anything against the two, but building on a poorly designed and outdated infrastructure is asking for trouble. I'll take Toronto any day over Edmonton if I had a choice. Too bad about the Car2go...its definitely a good model for moving away from individual car ownership. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeT Posted June 8, 2018 Share Posted June 8, 2018 Car2go was getting out of smarts shortly anyway so who cares? At least in the context of this Club. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smartzuuk Posted June 9, 2018 Share Posted June 9, 2018 @ stickman007 Just wait for the really fun news when he shows up here to tell us about his new job, Eddie Eddie Eddie...….. LOL!!!!! Edmonton is such a bizarre place - I can never figure that city out. It's such a sprawl. Calgary has grown on me a tiny bit. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FormerEnthusiast Posted June 9, 2018 Share Posted June 9, 2018 Hmm... I didn't think my login was still valid on this site as it's been a while. However Keith's right, I do have a new job semi related to this topic. Edmonton is currently expanding their LRT from Downton to the South East section of our city. It's the Valley Line LRT project which will cost almost $2 billion. It may cost just as much of not more for stage 2 of the project which connects the same line from Downton to our city's West End after this is done. I personally love it for a few reasons: It's about time we get some modern trains in our system such as the Flexity Freedom by Bombardier Transportation. Our current fleet is retrofitted Siemens trains, some of which have been in operation since the late 70's. Everything runs at grade with a beautiful layout that eliminates traffic bottlenecks caused by our other LRT lines & offers what I find to be the most scenic view compared to our current system. As well most importantly, I will be the first driver of these trains having been recently hired on by Bombardier Transportation. While totally unexpected, it's the big break I have been looking for & I'm very excited about this opportunity. I head out to Ontario this Sunday for the rest of the month for training in Kingston as well some hands on experience in Waterloo. I have yet to mention to the company that this is my first flight since the 90's & I might be afraid of flying... I'll leave that as a surprise when I get to the airport tomorrow morning. (I offered to drive the 37 hours at my own expense & still be there on time for Monday morning, but was denied.) The upcoming 2+ years wait for our new trains to come into service reminds me of what it was like waiting for the first shipments of our Fortwo to arrive. Eddie 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeT Posted June 9, 2018 Share Posted June 9, 2018 Still have the Ford Fiasco? Ours has been utter crap but we still have it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FormerEnthusiast Posted June 9, 2018 Share Posted June 9, 2018 Hey Mike, I do still have my Fiesta. Mine's been great to me. I can coax 1098km out of the 47L tank & otherwise has been relatively trouble free. I was going to give it away last year to the kidney foundation so I could get a new car, but the money I was going to use for its replacement kept me afloat for the 60 weeks I remained unemployed. Next year once the 2020 models come out I'll replace the Fiesta with a Hyundai Ioniq PHEV. It's one of the few hybrid cars out there that can better my Fiesta for highway fuel efficiency. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darren Posted June 11, 2018 Author Share Posted June 11, 2018 Heheh... Toronto is STILL waiting for our Bombardier streetcars that were due two years ago. You might be waiting a while... Daimler transitioning away from the smarts to the CLA and GLA really sucked. The smarts were a joy to drive (at least the 453s were) and so easy to park. They fulfilled their role very nicely. The CLA and GLA are awful to drive and park, and have terrible seats and lousy ergonomics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
niteshooter Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 2 hours ago, darren said: Heheh... Toronto is STILL waiting for our Bombardier streetcars that were due two years ago. You might be waiting a while... Daimler transitioning away from the smarts to the CLA and GLA really sucked. The smarts were a joy to drive (at least the 453s were) and so easy to park. They fulfilled their role very nicely. The CLA and GLA are awful to drive and park, and have terrible seats and lousy ergonomics. Heh heh, I was about to mention the same thing. Toronto is not too thrilled with the delays that Bombardier has had with our streetcars. They seem nice but their inability to build them in time is a real issue. C2G ditched a lot of smarts here last year, I had thought they were being replaced by MB vehicles which means taking up more space than the smarts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeT Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 The last Mercedes that seemed decent to me was the W212 E Class, the other stuff is cramped and nasty inside and out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darren Posted June 12, 2018 Author Share Posted June 12, 2018 14 hours ago, niteshooter said: C2G ditched a lot of smarts here last year, I had thought they were being replaced by MB vehicles which means taking up more space than the smarts. I think there were a lot of factors in play that led a lot of downtown Toronto residents to grow increasingly annoyed with car2go. Last year, you would see cars getting collected and lined up neatly in legal on-street overnight parking. That seemed to taper off into the fall and winter months. I suspect the mounting costs of paying all the fines in their un-sanctioned "free floating" parking experiment was leading to staff and service reductions in car2go's Toronto operation. It felt like in recent months, cars weren't being moved or maintained nearly as much as they had in the past. I encountered numerous cars that were dirty, had burned out lights, sometimes thousands of kilometres past service intervals, and often had zero washer fluid, which is unforgivable in the winter months. One car I had for a daily rental ended up with a flat tire. Cars were being left on residential streets, sometimes for days at a time, accumulating tickets. It seems that they took a confrontational approach, rather than trying to build a partnership that actually worked. For car2go, it was "my way or the highway," and so they went. It's disappointing, because it was a very popular service among members, who are ultimately the ones who got screwed by the company AND the city. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeT Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 ...and Car2go is dead everywhere. Interesting experiment...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darren Posted December 19, 2019 Author Share Posted December 19, 2019 Yeah, I had hoped with the new Geely partnership, they'd be coming back in a big way, but given the way Canada-USA-China relations have been going in the last year, I'm guessing Chinese companies are no longer as interested in fighting their way into the North American market. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.