Mayor Valérie Plante announced this afternoon that major changes will be made to regulations faced by car-sharing services in parts of the city. It's good news for car-sharing companies like CommunAuto and Car2Go, as well as the thousands of Montrealers that use them to get around town.
Right now, car-sharing services like Car2Go and Commun-Auto are only allowed to be used in eight of Montreal's nineteen boroughs. Among the boroughs that allow their use are the Plateau Mont-Royal, Rosemont-La Petite Patrie, and the Sud-Ouest.
In the downtown Ville-Marie borough, however, car-shares are currently not allowed to park in most places with their universal permits. A small number of spaces were made available under the former Coderre Administration, but they were only for use by electric cars, and most car-sharing vehicles are hybrids or gas-powered.
Plante says that now, car-sharing vehicles will be able to park anywhere on Ville-Marie's east and west sides, with the existing regulations remaining in place only in the borough's central business district. Borough administrations in Ahunstic-Cartierville and Outremont will also legalize car-sharing -- those are two parts of the city that Car2Go and CommunAuto have been asking for access to for quite some time.
The Mayor has long been an advocate of car-sharing services -- she was a major proponent of them during last year's election campaign. She says it expands access for many Montrealers to a new way to get around, part of her strategy to increase mobility for people who live in the city.
She added that while there will still be plenty of boroughs where car-sharing isn't legal, she hopes that support will grow as their availability increases. "It's an opportunity for other Montrealers to say: we want [this] in our borough," she said.