CASR & Colorado CarShare

Denver Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency Office and Colorado Carshare Program

We spoke with Mike Sal­is­bury, Trans­porta­tion Ener­gy Lead at the Den­ver Office of Cli­mate Action, Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and Resilien­cy (CASR) about Denver’s newest car­share pro­gram. Mike leads the City of Denver’s work with elec­tric vehi­cles and also works on elec­tri­fied mobil­i­ty. On Feb­ru­ary 10, 2021, CASR announced they added sev­en elec­tric car­share vehi­cles into six under-resourced com­mu­ni­ties. The car­share pro­gram, man­aged by non-prof­it Col­orado Car­share, will aid up to 450 res­i­dents of these areas in access­ing clean, safe transportation.

CASR aid­ed Col­orado Car­share in this part­ner­ship by get­ting fund­ing sources on the ground, iden­ti­fy­ing the loca­tions that most need­ed car­share use includ­ing charg­ing sta­tions and site hosts, and pro­vid­ing fund­ing for out­reach and dis­count com­po­nents for income-qual­i­fied res­i­dents. This pro­gram used part of their $126.8 mil­lion in fund­ing from the Coro­n­avirus Aid, Relief and Eco­nom­ic Secu­ri­ty (CARES) Act and sought to pro­vide COVID-19 relief by pro­vid­ing an addi­tion­al mobil­i­ty option for those reluc­tant to take crowd­ed pub­lic tran­sit or ride-shar­ing programs.

This is not the first time CASR and Col­orado Car­share have worked togeth­er. The first pilot pro­gram involved just one elec­tric car­share vehi­cle in Denver’s La Alma Lin­coln Park neigh­bor­hood in 2019. This vehi­cle was in Col­orado Carshare’s top five fre­quent­ly used EVs in their fleet, prov­ing the need for mobil­i­ty access in an under­served loca­tion, and cre­at­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand this work. The cur­rent car­share pro­gram was launched at the end of 2020, so engage­ment and out­reach are still under­go­ing. Mike hopes that this pro­gram will be as or more suc­cess­ful than the pilot and is enthu­si­as­tic about the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get more indi­vid­u­als into elec­tric vehi­cles, as an own­er of an EV himself.

Along with these sev­en new vehi­cles, there are charg­ing sta­tions avail­able to car­share users, five of which were new­ly added and two of which are owned by the City of Den­ver and are free to use by the pub­lic. Users can choose to rent the vehi­cles by time lim­it or dif­fer­ent rate plans based on expect­ed usage through­out the week. Income-qual­i­fied res­i­dents can also sign up for sub­si­dized Col­orado Car­share mem­ber­ships to access the vehi­cles in these locations:

• 2855 Tremont St, Den­ver Motor Vehi­cles Build­ing, Five Points/Whittier Neighborhoods
• 330 24th Ave, Den­ver Hous­ing Author­i­ty, Five Points Neighborhood
• 10th and Decatur, Den­ver Hous­ing Author­i­ty, Sun Val­ley Neighborhood
• 1024 Nava­jo, Den­ver Hous­ing Author­i­ty, La Alma Lin­coln Park Neighborhood
• 2004 Chest­nut Place, City lot, Union Station/Five Points Neighborhoods
• 1600 N Down­ing St, Urban Land Con­ser­van­cy, City Park West Neighborhood

View this map to find vehi­cle and charg­ing locations.

For more infor­ma­tion on how to use these vehi­cles and how to par­tic­i­pate in Col­orado Carshare’s pro­gram, go to https://carshare.org/.