Is Car-Sharing Business Coming to Garage Near You -- Even in Your Building?

Now he can set up a car-sharing network right in your apartment. Or can he?

​Come January, a new statewide law will allow you to adjust your insurance to use your car as a shared vehicle. Meanwhile, legislation coming up at tomorrow's Board of Supervisors meeting will more easily allow you -- or your neighbor -- to open up a car-sharing port in his or her garage.

How you feel about this depends greatly on how you feel about living in close proximity to a potentially thriving -- revving, rolling -- business. And it could be in your apartment or next door to your home.

The ordinance, authored by Supervisor David Chiu and co-sponsored by Supervisors Sophie Maxwell and Eric Mar, would "permit car-share spaces in the same manner as residential accessory parking."

Yet before NIMBY types invade the Board chambers with nightmare scenarios about a valet service being run within latte-tossing distance of their kitchens, the legislation does have some restrictions. Any car-sharing operations must "not unduly impact pedestrian spaces or movement, transit service, bicycle movement, or the overall traffic movement in the district."

In promoting car-sharing as an alternative transportation means, however, new developments will be required to reserve space for it. Projects providing more than 10 spaces for non-residential uses must reserve 5 percent of their slots for car-sharing.

This legislation has not stirred up much in the way of opposition, and City Hall folks we spoke to described it as "uncontroversial." Whether it gets that reception out in the neighborhoods remains to be seen.

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