Car co-op on island / incentives to get junker cars off the island
My truck (1988 F150) is getting pretty long in the tooth and it seems there is always something breaking on it. I decided enough was enough and decided to see what incentives are out there to get the car off the road. Turns out the BC government has funded a program called Scrapit (www.scrapit.ca) that offers 7 incentives (some don't really apply here) to turn in old cars that still run and have been insured for the last 12 months- up to $1250 on a 2004 or newer car, a transit pass for a year in Vancouver or 2 years in Victoria, a new bike up to $700, $1000 credit towards a car share or rideshare, or $300 in cash. I think this program may be of interest to those people that have aging cars maybe plugging up the parking area and could get some significant $ towards something else really useful. Not to mention helping the island community in reducing the number of vehicles and the overall carbon footprint! While there isn't a coop car on the island here at this time, the Scrapit program said they would consider extending the coop car credit option here if we started a coop. If 10 people turned their junker cars in for recycling, that would mean $10,000 towards a new vehicle!
There would obviously be big details to work out. One issue with a shared car on the island would be one of maintainance. Certainly starting off with a dependable newer car would help and regular maintaince could be done on island but if there was any serious problem/accident, the car would likely have to be barged off island for repair, leaving a number of people without a vehicle. Another potential gotcha would be the BC government- they're introducing a new budget in a couple of weeks and have already started chopping programs so I don't know how long this will last. Coordination of the vehicle would be another issue- it would have to be located in a neighbourhood convenient to its users for walking/biking to/from. I've checked into group insurance and with our remote island policy, actually it seems quite do-able. A brand-new Jeep Patriot with $5M liability and full collision coverage for all co-op drivers would cost only$878 plus licencing/plates!
I think for now I'll probably take the bike incentive option (+bike trailer to fit my needs) but I would be interested to help get this coop off the ground if there is enough interest. My e-mail is rocavan [at] gmail [dot] com if you want to contact me directly- I'm in the directory too. Comments/ideas welcome!!!
Cheers,
Rob Cameron
