Communauto expands west to Lachine, Dorval

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The city's main ride-sharing company is expanding westward and significantly expanding its fleet of vehicles.

Communauto announced Monday that it will expand its flexible service in Lachine, which will allow cars to be picked up and parked anywhere on the island in designated areas without a reservation, adding stations in Dorval, Cartierville, Montreal Nord, Rivière des Prairies and more. Bois-Franc neighborhood of St. Laurent.

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This represents a significant westward expansion. Dorval currently has only one station for Communauto cars, while Lachine has no flexible facility for its vehicles. The new area will be located around 21st Avenue between the lakefront and St. Antoine Street.

With its move into the suburbs, Communauto will be adding more minibuses to its fleet in the coming months. A total of 1,100 cars will be added, 85 of which will be Kia Niro electric cars and 70 Kia Carnaval minibuses. The company will start with 900 station wagons, aiming to add the rest by the summer before the high holiday season. The goal is to add 200 flexible vehicles by the fall.

The Plante administration said the expansion is good news because when car-sharing spots are added, they are quickly snapped up by locals. Communauto claims that every car it puts on the road will add at least 10 cars to the total number of cars in the city. The service is now available in 17 of the city's 19 arrondissements, as well as Laval and Longueuil and other cities in the Montreal area.

“The more mobility options we offer, the more people will take them,” said Sophie Mauzerolle, the city's executive committee member responsible for mobility.

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According to Benoit Robert, founder and CEO of Communauto, the expansion of the fleet will help current users find cars more easily. However, he cautioned that people shouldn't expect to always have cars in the areas where the service is most popular.

“We need to see it as a complementary service to other modes of transportation,” Robert said. “If you think there will always be a car in front of your house, you will be disappointed. But it's not difficult to walk 200 or 300 meters to get a car, and we usually see the most common place of membership, which is on the Plateau Mont-Royal.”

He said the service is growing by more than 20 percent a year, gaining about 40,000 new users a year.

About 38 percent of Plateau households are members of the Communato. In Ville-Marie, it is 33 percent, and the third highest percentage of users is in Outremont, at 23 percent of households. Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie and Sud-Ouest round out the top five with 21 and 19 percent, respectively.

Robert said the service should be rolled out gradually by adding stations first and watching demand grow.

“It's useless to park cars where there is no demand because the cars will stay there,” he said. “We'll have to wait to see the tipping point to add more cars.”

Communauto spokesman Marco Viviani said the company plans to add a car to every REM station with parking around it. 26 stations are planned for the new electric light rail system, and all but three (Technopark, Trudeau Airport and Griffintown stations) should come online this year.

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