Our History...

The People's Car Co-operative Inc. became the first legally incorporated car-sharing co-operative in Ontario when it incorporated as a non-profit co-op without share capital in April 1998.

For a year, we were ten friends who were saving money and reducing car usage by sharing a ten-year-old car donated by one of our members. But we had ambitious dreams: we wanted to grow into an organization that could serve more people and make a more significant environmental impact. Once we had figured out the logistics of operating a car sharing organization and done it for a year, we decided to go public try to persuade others to give up their cars and join us.

In June 1999, we secured a loan from the Waterloo Regional Credit Union to purchase our first vehicle, an eight-year-old Honda Accord. We invited the local media to the vehicle launching and received a lot of positive coverage. Our first new member joined the next month, and we grew to eighteen members in the next year.

In May 2000, the organization embarked on a public campaign to introduce itself to local governments and increase its public profile. Co-op representatives made presentations to the City of Waterloo, City of Kitchener, and the Region of Waterloo, explaining the car sharing concept and inviting their collaboration in helping car sharing help them achieve their own social and environmental objectives.

Those presentations led to what would become a long-term partnership. The first partnership was in the form of joint applications to a number of funders to embark on an eighteen-month expansion project called "Moving to Cleaner Air." Almost $100,000 was secured from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, The Co-operators Co-operative Development Fund, the City of Kitchener Community Development Infrastructure Program, and EcoAction Canada. Starting in January 2001, the co-op was able to hire two part-time staff: one focused on writing a business plan and designing and implementing a marketing strategy, and the other worked on setting up the infrastructure to operate the organization - setting up an office, streamlining management systems, purchasing vehicles, etc.

By August 2001, the co-op had 35 members and four vehicles - all located along the K-W's central transit corridor on or near King Street. The Accord had been sold in favour of newer (but not new) vehicles: the fleet contained three 1997 Ford Escorts, and a 1999 Toyota Corolla.

In keeping with its new business plan, the co-op embarked on a search for financing that would allow it to run operating deficits while continuing to expand its membership to a point where it could pay all expenses from its own revenues. In 2002, three local governments agreed to unprecedented decisions to help finance car sharing. The City of Waterloo, City of Kitchener, and the Region of Waterloo each agreed to extend $30,000 lines of credit to the co-op, to be repaid, with interest, after seven years.

By the end of the eighteen-month "Moving to Cleaner Air" project in June 2002, the co-op had added 23 new members who had reduced their driving by over 73,000km, resulting in 18 fewer tonnes of CO 2 being released into the air. That summer, the co-op was given the Environmental Sustainability Award for the business category by the Kitchener-Waterloo and area Chamber of Commerce.

The co-op also faced its first big challenges in 2002. One of the two part-time staff positions - the Business Manager - turned over three times in less than a year. Revenues stagnated after going steadily up for the first three and a half years. While membership was continuing to grow at a steady pace of approximately two new members (net) per month, the newer members were not driving as much as the original members, most of whom had moved on. In December 2002, the Board made the difficult decision of not replacing one of the staff positions, and operating with only one half-time staff person.

The Board worked hard in 2003 to adjust to assuming roles that staff had performed for the previous year and a half, re-assessing financial projections and adjusting prices to ensure that the co-op remained on solid financial footing. In the Fall, a decision was made to pursue additional funding from governments and foundations willing to help solidify its financial position and pursue new projects which would expand the co-op's services while attracting new members. The funding proposals promised to establish a "transportation bank" for low-income people to pay off the $400 member loan in installments without interest, a bike-share network that would place recycled bicycles at all co-op car locations for members' use, a study into the feasibility of adding a wheelchair accessible van to the co-op fleet, and a variety of marketing initiatives to attract new members.

Responses from funders were once again very positive. By late 2004, "Moving to Sustainability" had attracted $125,000 in funding from the Cooperative Development Initiative (Agriculture Canada), Moving on Sustainable Transportation (MOST), the Region of Waterloo's National Child Benefit reinvestment program, the United Way of K-W and Area, and the Ontario Trillium Foundation, allowing the co-op to move from one half-time to two full-time staff.

Another major new development for the co-op was the decision to lease new vehicles, in January 2004. Having been denied financing by most banks and financing companies for years, the co-op was pleased to be approved for lease financing by Mitsubishi in January 2004, and replaced its three 1997 Escorts with 2004 Mitsubishi Lancers over the year.

As the People's Car rolled out its new logo and marketing materials in early 2005, its members have a proud history to look back on. A small group of committed individuals have brought a far-fetched dream into a reality in Kitchener-Waterloo. At over 140 members and eight vehicles, with online vehicle reservations and electronic invoicing, The People's Car has become a viable and efficient service that is achieving ambitious social and environmental goals. We welcome others to this local car sharing movement!

In September 2007, The People's Car Co-operative, Inc. began marketing our services under the new operating name of Grand River CarShare.  This name reflects the environmental benefits of carsharing, and coincided with the co-op's expansion into Cambridge. The tenth vehicle in the fleet was placed at the University of Waterloo's School of Achitecture in Galt.

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