Communauto not coming to West Island soon

BY RAFFY BOUDJIKANIAN

raffy.boudjikanian@transcontinental.ca

Though car-sharing organization Communauto allows Montreal-area residents to use any of their 700 cars parked in different lots across Quebec for as little as half an hour or as long as a day, do not expect the service to extend to the West Island anytime soon.

"This year, we are planning on moving into Cartierville and Montreal-West, so we will be moving a little further west," said company spokesperson Marco Viviani. "We try to meet demand by keeping the networks close to each other at the same time," he added.

Parking lots on the West Island are not in the cards anytime soon, since Communauto expands by creating new lots that are not too far from existing ones, explained Viviani. This way, the organization can ensure that cars may easily be spread out as needed if one of its lots is too empty or full on any given day.

Recently, Communauto signed a deal with the STM that benefits users of both public transit and their services. Instead of paying a $500 one-time fee, and an annual fee that hovers around $35, users who buy 12 monthly STM bus and metro transit passes can adhere to Communauto by only paying per kilometre and per hour fees.

"It's going well," Viviani said.

Student union representatives at the two West Island-based CEGEPs said having Communauto cars available in the area would be a great idea, but was not a priority.

"It's really great," Mathieu Pepin, vice-president internal affairs at Collège Gérald Godin, said. "We don't have the means or time to advocate for it, though."

According to Tiffany Dhaliwal, vice-president external affairs at John Abbott College, the subject came up at the student union executive, but did not get too far. "The West Island is pretty spread out," she said, adding it would be difficult to find a parking lot that could accommodate all students at the CEGEP.

Both representatives said getting to their campuses via public transit was easy. "We have the buses that go to Fairview and come back," Dhaliwal said. "Everything's going very well with the STM," said Pepin. He added that several students who come from off-island locations such as Île Perrot or Vaudreuil-Dorion tend to carpool.

Claude Roberge, director of social housing units at Pierrefonds's Cloverdale district, said Communauto's fees, though less expensive than buying or leasing a personal car, are likely too prohibitive for his residents. Public transit is usually sufficient for Cloverdale residents to get to and from work, he added.

A 2005 Statistics Canada study that looked at transportation trends on a single reference day found that 73 per cent of all trips starting in Montreal's suburban municipalities were done by car.

Viviani said both Pierrefonds/Roxboro borough and the West Island Health and Social Services Centre approached Communauto about extending their services to the West Island previously. Currently, the company's closest parking lots to the area are in Lachine and Côte Vertu in St. Laurent.