In line with recent City Council legislation, the NYC Department of Transportation is launching a two-year citywide pilot to designate parking spaces in municipal parking facilities and on-street in select neighborhoods exclusively for the use of carsharing organizations (CSOs).
Carsharing is a service that gives members access to an automobile for short-term use ― usually by the hour or minute. Carshare companies typically provide either roundtrip service, where members borrow and return vehicles at the same location (e.g. Zipcar and Enterprise Carshare), or one-way service, where members pick up a car at one location and drop it off at another within the company’s service zone (e.g. Car2Go and ReachNow). Carshare has the potential to:
- Improve local air quality and reduce congestion - New Yorkers who use carshare drive less than those who own their own car. Less driving means cleaner air and fewer cars on city streets.
- Shorten your search for parking by ensuring that carsharers always have a reserved space. Better yet, adding carshare spaces reduces personal car ownership, which benefits all drivers in the neighborhood by lowering the number of cars competing for the curb.
- Lower household transportation costs by providing reliable access to a car without annual car insurance and maintenance bills, tickets, and unexpected costs. You only pay for as much or as little as you drive.
- Improve access to services, friends/family, and recreation by making a car available when you need one.
While there are carsharing organizations already in NYC, there are many neighborhoods where curbside parking is hard to find and there are no private garages, which effectively keeps carshare out of convenient reach for many New Yorkers. This pilot aims to put carshare within convenient reach of more New Yorkers to increase the mobility and financial benefits of the service for residents and the city as a whole.
As part of this pilot, NYC DOT will be siting carshare vehicles in carshare parking zones at corners -- for maximum visibility and convenience for residents -- where there are existing alternate side parking regulations.
If your neighborhood is in one of the select carshare parking zones, please tell us where would you like to see carshare using our feedback maps -- click the feedback map for your neighborhood on the righthand side of the home page and "add a comment" at the locations where you think it would be most useful to locate a carsharing vehicle.