BANFF – Banff council is driving ahead with investigating the feasibility of a car-share program.
Town of Banff officials say a car-sharing program could create affordable options for residents who don’t own cars, and ease parking pressures in residential neighbourhoods.
Darren Enns, director of planning and environment, said initiating a car-share program requires extensive research to develop the right program design for Banff.
“Car-share is a logical and probable transportation solution for the community because of our highly transient population and parking and transportation challenges,” said Enns.
“Before we launch a program or a pilot, we want to study the issue a bit more. Let’s try to figure out what we’re trying to achieve and what the best model is for achieving that.”
Banff’s governance and finance committee voted 4-2 to give the go-ahead to spend $20,000 from visitor paid parking revenues to fund the study, though the decision isn’t final until budget passes in January.
In general, four main car-share models exist – round-trip; one-way; peer-to-peer and free-floating – though administration seems to favour the round-trip option, which involves returning the car to the same place it was picked up.
Enns said municipalities do operate car-share programs, but they are limited and do come with risk.
“The typical role of a municipality is to occupy a space of a mix of regulator, an agency that helps move something along, and a facilitator of third-party car-share programs,” he said.
Banff currently has two small-scale car-share programs in the community, including at a private staff accommodation on Beaver Street and at the municipality’s 131-unit Ti’nu apartment building.
Construction of both projects included provisions for an on-site car-share program to qualify for parking stall reductions.
There are currently four car-share vehicles available for residents of Ti’nu. There are 22 member in the program, although only nine are currently active.
There were 84 rentals in 2020, 176 rentals in 2021 and 236 in 2022.
Enns said this program could potentially expand to be used for a town-wide pilot program.
“Car-share programs kind of function like airlines; airlines want to keep their planes in the air all the time, and car-share programs want to keep their cars on the road and that’s where they get their efficiencies from,” he said.
“So our focus on looking at the Ti’nu assets was how could we maximize the use of those assets, and if we’re not doing that at the building scale, could we scale it up a bit? That’s just one of the things we would study with this feasibility project.”
With councillors Ted Christensen and Hugh Pettigrew voting in opposition, Mayor Corrie DiManno voiced strong support.
“I just think this is a fantastic idea and I think it fits really well into the sustainable transportation network that we are continuing to build and improve upon in our community,” she said.
“We know that it’s expensive to own a car, you’ve got to have somewhere to park that car, and with 60 per cent of our community renting they may not always have stalls available,” she added.
“I also see it helping to fill the gaps in mass transit, so I think this type of micro-transit can help get folks to the city, help get them to trailheads, and I think we benefit from studying it a bit more.”
Pettigrew said he was curious why people couldn’t simply rent vehicles from companies in town.
“It’s not that hard to rent one. Is that not part of a car-share plan already,” he said.
First and foremost, Enns said a car-share program is targeted at providing an affordable option for residents, noting the program isn’t intended to be competition for rental car companies providing cars to visitors.
Secondly, he said car rental prices vary wildly from season to season.
“This summer, a typical car rental rate was over $100 a day in the town of Banff, and right now it’s around $40 a day, very economical, but the pressures we face are typically in the summer when fleets are highly subscribed,” he said.
“Post-COVID, the car rental business saw massive spikes to the point that other, even unauthorized, were renting their private vehicles, and so that’s something that’s an indicator of price.”
Earlier this year, Canmore and Banff issued a joint request for information (RFI).
The idea was to gather input from car-share vendors on options in smaller communities and gauge interest from companies to deliver the service in Canmore and Banff.
Enns said this was limited.
“We’ve been shaking the trees a bit in industry discussions already and trying to determine what other people are doing and where other people are going,” he said.
