On February 24, Colorado CarShare was honored to present our current electric vehicle (EV) carshare work to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Governor Jared Polis, Senators John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, and other state representatives. Our staff and several of our members demonstrated how we’ve brought electric car sharing to under represented communities. The event took place in Denver’s Mariposa neighborhood, our first of these locations. It was an amazing honor and exemplified how our efforts are creating a model of sustainable transportation equity from the local to national levels.
Colorado CarShare CEO & Executive Director, Peter Krahenbuhl, spoke to the audience about their initiative to bring electric car share vehicles, which do not produce emissions, to lower income and affordable housing communities. Doing so provides a much needed means of transportation, in addition to lowering the greenhouse gasses produced by transportation. This is a core tenet of our effort to drive shared change.
As Peter explained to Secretary Buttigieg and other esteemed representatives, “one round trip car share vehicle takes an estimated 9-13 vehicles off the road, while supporting upwards of 60+ families, individuals and businesses. It also saves our car share members thousands of dollars per year. So in addition to a reduction in traffic, parking, carbon emissions and other pollution, there is a huge economic benefit to car sharing. Then add affordable, electrified car sharing in communities that need it the most, you can see why we view what we’re doing here as the convergence of social equity and what I call sustain(mo)bility.”
This initiative began largely with support from The City and County of Denver, as well as the Denver Foundation a few years ago in order to pilot EV car sharing in under-represented communities. More recently support from the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), who hosted the event, is part of a larger CDOT innovation grant program to support organizations working on addressing transportation issues.
We were also blessed to be joined by a few of our wonderful CarShare members, Michelle Jackson, Diane and David Huntress, and Noel Taylor (left). The Huntress’ and Michelle shared their experience using Colorado CarShare and expressed their gratitude for the reliable and affordable mode of transportation.