Car Sharing

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Communauto ‘Flex’ service coming to Ottawa and Gatineau
By Ted Raymond, CTV
September 26, 2025

The Communauto carsharing service is expanding its offerings in Ottawa and Gatineau with “Flex” service options that will serve both cities.

Typically, a Communauto customer must reserve a car in advance, pick it up at a specific location and return it to the same spot when done. Flex service allows drivers to pick up an available vehicle on demand and end the trip in any valid location.

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and Gatineau Mayor Maude Marquis-Bissonnette made the joint announcement Friday alongside Communauto founder and president Benoît Robert. The pilot project will launch in mid-October with a fleet of 30 vehicles.

“We want to give our residents as many options as possible and we want to continue to treat Ottawa and Gatineau as one economic region. Sometimes, it’s challenging because it’s two cities. It’s two provinces. There’s a river in between us,” Sutcliffe told CTV News Ottawa.

“This is an example of how when we work together, we can provide solutions on both sides of the river. Somebody can pick up a car in Ottawa and drive it to Gatineau and leave it here. Or they can pick up a car in Gatineau, drive to Ottawa and leave it there. It’s a great system.”

The service will be available in Sandy Hill, Centretown, the Glebe, and the Island of Hull. Each of these areas will be considered “Flex zones” where a rented car from the region can be dropped off when done.

Benoit Robert, President and founder of Communauto, says the two municipal administrations worked together to make this program possible.

“They were able to collaborate together and they were able to remove all the barriers that prevented us to launch this offer that’s existed for quite a while now in Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, Hamilton, in Ontario as well,” Robert said.

“To achieve our sustainable mobility goals, it was essential for the Gatineau–Ottawa region to have a free-floating carsharing service available without reservation. In today’s economic context, providing a more affordable alternative to car ownership is a necessity,” said Marquis-Bissonnette. “Each free-floating vehicle can replace 7 to 11 private cars on the road, helping to reduce congestion and improve the quality of life for the entire community. I welcome this collaboration between our two cities, which reflects the economic reality and the transportation matters of our region.”

According to Communauto, you can travel anywhere in Canada or the U.S. with a Flex vehicle, but it must be returned to a “Flex zone” within the city where the vehicle belongs. In the National Capital Region, a car rented in Ottawa can be released in Gatineau and vice versa.

“It complements, our public transit system because it’s just giving people more options,” Sutcliffe said.

“Having an option like this where somebody can use a car, travel a certain distance, park it and leave it there, maybe they get picked up later, or they walk home or take public transit. It just gives more options.”

Commonauto uses a tiered subscription system. Drivers are charged by the hour for use of a Communauto vehicle. Rates include insurance, and drivers are asked to leave at least a quarter tank of gas in the car when dropping it off.

“Whether a Communauto user is registered in Gatineau or Ottawa, the FLEX rate in the National Capital Region will be the most advantageous between the user’s Ontario plan rate and the FLEX per-minute rate,” the company says.

MOBI-O, the mobility expertise centre for Outaouais and Abitibi-Témiscamingue, says the arrival of Flex service will benefit both residents and visitors to the National Capital Region.

“A single sustainable transportation solution doesn’t suit everyone. To meet needs, we must offer several reliable and available options, with as few constraints as possible,” said MOBI-O co-executive director Patrick Robert-Meunier in a news release, translated from French. “By adding a service like FLEX, we’re filling a gap that has existed for too long in the region.”

https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/communauto-flex-service-coming-to-ottawa-and-gatineau/

[rocketphish]

From street parking to dog hair, can a new car-sharing program succeed in Ottawa?
Communauto FLEX is trying accommodate the two cities, but there is skepticism about the pilot project because of the small service area.

By Nicholas Kohler, Ottawa Citizen
Published Oct 15, 2025 | Last updated 2 hours ago | 9 minute read

When Annaelle Catherine got a job at a food-services firm in Nepean a few years ago, she was confronted with the difficult problem of how to get to work each morning.

From her home in Old Ottawa South, the OC Transpo commute clocked in at around an hour and 20 minutes — too long, too gruelling.

Purchasing a vehicle was out of the question, too: these were pandemic days, and cars — especially used cars — were expensive.

So to make things work, Catherine in the end turned to Communauto.

The car-sharing company’s dedicated parking spots were steps from her home, which was good. But Catherine found herself booking those cars for her entire workday — around 10 hours — which felt like it wasn’t in the spirit of “car sharing”.

“The car would be sitting in a parking lot, which is not great, because somebody else could have been using it,” says Catherine, who is 32 and whose job involves drafting plans for commercial kitchens around North America. Despite her heavy use of the service, which ranged from two to five workday-length bookings a week, it was cheaper than car ownership: about $350 a month.

Since those days, a relatively far-flung romantic attachment has led Catherine to break down and buy a vehicle, but she nevertheless describes herself somewhat ruefully as “bitter” to learn that Communauto is introducing the FLEX program to Ottawa and Gatineau only now that she’s a car owner.

That new service, set to begin as early as this month — an exact date hasn’t been announced — lets users pick up FLEX vehicles at short notice in one on-street parking location, then end the trip at another. Members find cars and manage their bookings through Communauto’s mobile app. Until now, Ottawa-Gatineau has only been offered Communauto’s regular, station-based service, which requires that a car be booked in advance and returned to a dedicated home spot.

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https://ottawacitizen.com/news/communauto-flex-ottawa-car-sharing