Car Sharing

Today the city of Los Angeles and BlueLA launched a new program to provide electric-powered car-sharing for low income communities.

This week the non-profit Shared-Use Mobility Center released its blueprint for the future of Southern California. The Los Angeles County Shared Mobility Action Plan [PDF] outlines a future for L.A. County with expanded transit, car-share, bike-share, ride-hailing, mobility hubs, and more. The plan predicts that all this will lead to 2 percent less driving, meaning roughly 100,000 fewer private cars on L.A. streets in five years.

Gabe Klein is one of the United States' top livability leaders. From the private sector, he became a maverick city transportation department head for Washington D.C., then Chicago. In leading those DOTs, he championed innovative multi-modal approaches that activate streets. He embraces bicycling, walking, and new technologies. This year, he has a new book out titled Start Up City: Inspiring Public & Private Entrepeneurship, Getting Projects Done, and Having Fun.

Last Friday, Metro and Zipcar announced a new partnership that places car-share vehicles at ten Metro station parking lots. The new program was announced via a press conference at the North Hollywood Red Line Station. Speakers included Los Angeles Mayor and Metro Board Chair Eric Garcetti, Metro Boardmember Jacquelyn Dupont-Walker, Metro's new CEO Phil Washington, and Zipcar Regional Vice President Dan Grossman. The cars are available and ready now.

Yesterday Transit Center, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), Move L.A., and the Shared Use Mobility Center, joined forces with two dozen other organizations and businesses to host Live Ride Share. The conference was billed as the “first to focus on shared mobility in Southern California [and] highlighted the profound changes occurring in transportation around the world and the economic, political and lifestyle ramifications of these developments in SoCal.”

A couple weeks ago, I was asked to sit in on a panel reviewing and critiquing undergraduate design students' visions for the future of Los Angeles transportation. The location was Otis College of Art and Design, located near LAX. Lecturer and Architect Matt Gagnon had given his product design students a simple, but far reaching, assignment: design for the future of mobility in L.A.

Yesterday, Streetsblog L.A. attended Digital Cities, Smarter Transportation, a one-day conference on "technology and the future of mobility, cities, and regions" hosted by the UCLA Lewis Center and the UCLA Institute for Transportation Studies.  Here are a few highlights from the proceedings:

ed’s note: This week, we’re featuring a short series of articles from our board member Juan Matute on what he’s thinking about technology and transportation.  His first thoughts were on vehicle connectivity versus automation.

For as long as I've covered car-sharing in Los Angeles, it's been something of a disaster. Our first story, published on Street Heat in 2007, was about how ZipCar's buyout of Flex Car would lead to a dramatic reduction of car-share. Nearly six years later, Los Angeles, a city with over 4 million people, has a pathetic 40 cars in its ZipCar fleet, with less than a dozen in its nearest competitor, LAX Car Share.