Buffalo CarShare revs engine for expansion

Student Ashley Perez checks out the CareShare vehicle at Buffalo State

By Caitlin Kupiec
 and James McDonald
Bengal News West Reporters

Buffalo CarShare has its foot on the gas and is driving to expand its services to the city of Buffalo, including the West Side.

Buffalo CarShare is a non-profit that offers the community a lower priced and environmentally friendly transportation system. Over the summer, the organization received a $300,000 grant from the John R. Oishei Foundation to double its number of vehicles to 30 by December 2015.

It currently has five cars located on the West Side. One is on Niagara Street at the Niagara Café, another at the Quaker Bonnet Eatery at Rhode Island Street and Chenango Street, a third on Grant Street near West Delavan Avenue  behind PUSH Buffalo, and a fourth and fifth car in the M-2 and C lots at SUNY Buffalo State. It also has vehicles stationed in Allentown and the Elmwood village. 

The organization added a 17th vehicle in October, at Joe’s Service Center at the corner of Elmwood Avenue and Amherst Street, allowing wider access in the Grant/Amherst neighborhood for the 650 Buffalo CarShare members.

According to Jennifer White, the public relations and marketing associate for Buffalo CarShare,  most of the organization’s customers walk, bike, or take public transit, and use Buffalo CarShare occasionally for short trips. She says 48 percent of its members live in households with a total income of $25,000 or less and two-thirds of its members live in households with no vehicle access at all.

Jennifer White, on CarShare's impact on the West Side:

White said the organization also partners with non-profits who use its service for free. According to her, PUSH Buffalo uses Buffalo CarShare and said the service has helped the organization  save money, time and stress on transportation needs.

Tamar Rothaus, finance, administration and operations director at PUSH told White that the small non-profit is  always looking for ways to add creative and useful employee benefits to its   staff, many of whom live in the neighborhood and bike or walk to work. And the opportunity to use a car for work-related trips and avoid the expense of owning their own car is a huge benefit. 

Also, by offering shared work and personal accounts, Rothaus told White that PUSH can take on the enrollment fees and offer staff the reduced hourly rate for any personal use of CarShare. 

Other West Side non-profit members include the Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper and the Massachusetts Avenue Project.

“Our service provides members freedom and access to health care, healthy food, and a chance to visit friends and family that they weren’t able to do before Buffalo CarShare existed,” White said.

  Lisa Krieger,  associate vice president of Buffalo State,  said that college students and faculty alike have their own reasons for investing in an organization like CarShare. The on-campus parking ban for freshman and sophomores that live within 30 miles of campus makes it difficult to use one's own transportation, and faculty members who occasionally leave campus to go to events often find difficulty in finding a parking spot when they come back.

“When you factor those two things together, bringing a car sharing program to Buffalo State made sense and I think it’s doing well,” Krieger said.

According to Krieger, the CarShare program has been very successful on campus and benefits the students in so many ways.

“Say they need to go to the Galleria to buy a birthday present or want to go for a job interview downtown,” Krieger said. “The CarShare is really the perfect solution to those odd times where they don’t have to use it five times a week, but just maybe five times a semester.”

With the popularity of CarShare rising at all its locations, White is excited to keep the organization expanding to help more and more people continue to use its  services for convenient transportation. She said as far as the future of its presence on the West Side goes, Buffalo CarShare’s main goal is to continue to grow its service to individuals and non-profits in the area. More information and updates can be found on www.buffalocareshare.org and Facebook.

“As we branch out we would like to eventually develop a marketing plan for the neighborhood to include partnering with more businesses, non-profits, block-clubs, and neighborhood associations,” White said.