By Liz Field, Ithaca Carshare Director
Ithaca Carshare has paused operations for more than three months now, and Governor Hochul still hasn’t signed A.5718b/S.5959b even though it unanimously passed both houses of the New York State legislature in June.
While we wait, we’ve had to take a hard look at our budget and cash flows, and with a 6-month built-in waiting period after the governor signs the bill, if she doesn’t sign it as-is in August (or with minimal changes) we’ll have to close Ithaca Carshare for good on September 1, 2023.
What’s really disheartening is that if the governor doesn’t sign the bill — which will give all nonprofits access to auto insurance from a nonprofit Risk Retention Group — the carshares that launched in the past year in Albany and Rochester will also close. Buffalo Carshare will not be able to re-launch, even though they received a large investment from NYSERDA like we did for Electric Vehicles, and nonprofit community carsharing will cease to exist in New York State.
Carsharing — especially the nonprofit, community-based kind — is a key component in making transportation more sustainable, accessible, and equitable, and works well in small to midsize cities. But because of New York State insurance regulations, New York is and will continue to fall far behind other states who are not only expanding nonprofit carshares, but increasing the Electric Vehicles in their fleets.
In Burlington, the nonprofit Vermont Carshare has 25 vehicles in their fleet, including five Electric Vehicles (EVs) and seven Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs). They have over 1,100 members, and received state funding in 2021 to expand the EVs in their fleet and better serve households with lower incomes by placing vehicles at four affordable housing developments. They have a good working relationship with the city of Burlington and together have placed many EV chargers throughout the city. About 12-15% of their members qualify for low-income assistance, and 86% of their members belong to zero or 1-car households. In 2022, Vermont Carshare members reduced Vehicle Miles Traveled by 1.6 million miles, and saved more than 660 tons of carbon emissions.
The same is being done in Denver and Boulder, in cities and rural areas in California, Oregon and Washington, in Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, and all around the country. This is what we need in New York — solutions that address pollution, traffic congestion, fossil fuel emissions, and the high costs of infrastructure that our single-occupancy vehicle culture has wrought.
As Ithaca landscape architect Kathryn Chesebrough wrote in a letter to Governor Hochul, “The impacts [of carshares] on our cities cannot be understated. Walkable urbanism is the sustainable future that cities across New York State should be working on — and progress cannot be made in meaningful ways if we continue to rely on single-ownership cars and the parking infrastructure they require.”
No, we cannot. We must shift away from single-occupancy cars, but until our cities and communities are built in a way where a car isn’t always needed, carsharing helps bridge the gap between what we’re currently doing and what we need to be doing to address climate change.
We need Governor Hochul to sign bill A.5718b/S.05959b as-is, and to do so immediately.