Frequently Asked Questions

New York City must use its streets as efficiently as possible to move people and goods, which means increasing the share of residents who walk, bike, and take transit. DOT believes that shared-use mobility options such as carshare complement these goals. In addition to being a new initiative within NYC DOT’s Strategic Plan, recent City Council legislation has mandated that the agency conduct a two-year carshare pilot on-street in select neighborhoods and in all municipal parking facilities.

According to a robust and growing body of national research, carshare has tremendous potential benefits for New York City; most notably:

• Supporting a realistic alternative to personal car ownership that can save residents money on insurance, gas, and maintenance;
• Increasing on-street parking availability because a portion of carshare members "shed" their own cars after joining a carshare service;
• Adding a travel option for car-free households;
• Reducing congestion and improving air quality for all New Yorkers.

This two-year pilot will be informing the agency's long-term approach to carshare, and as such, the agency will be conducting a rigorous evaluation of the pilot to determine whether New York City receives the benefits to expanding access to carshare that other cities have experienced.

• Carshare companies participating in the pilot will be required to share data to help the agency better understand where and often carshare vehicles are used. 
• NYC DOT is working with academic partners at University of California, Berkeley, to survey carshare members to learn more about car ownership and travel trends among carshare members.
• The agency will also be conducting curbside access analyses in pilot zones to evaluate the impact of carshare on curbside parking availability. 

NYC DOT will be creating annual reports about this carshare pilot and its impacts, as required by City Council legislation. Once published, you will be able to find them in the Documents section of this website. 

Carshare is a service that gives members access to an automobile for short-term use ― usually by the hour or minute. Carshare companies typically provide either round-trip service, where members borrow and return vehicles at same location (e.g. Zipcar and Enterprise CarShare), or one-way service, where members pick up a car at one location and drop it off at another within the company’s service zone (e.g. ReachNow).

The on-street portion of the NYC DOT Carshare Pilot will take place in 14 select neighborhoods citywide:

• Boerum Hill, BK
• Brooklyn Heights, BK
• Cobble Hill - Carroll Gardens, BK
• East Harlem, MN
• East Williamsburg, BK
• Eastern Rockaways, QN
• Hamilton Heights, MN
• Jackson Heights, QN
• Jamaica, QN
• Morningside Heights, QN
• Park Slope, BK
• Parkchester, BX
• Red Hook, BK
• Williamsburg, BK

The off-street portion of the NYC DOT Carshare Pilot allocates 55 parking spaces across 17 municipal parking facilities available to carshare companies. The locations of the municipal parking facilities are as follows:

• Belmont Avenue, BX
• White Plains Road, BX
• Jerome & 190 Street, BX
• Avenue M, BK
• Bensonhurst #1 & # 2, BK
• Brighton Beach, BK
• Grant Avenue, BK
• Sheepshead Bay #1 & # 2, BK
• Broadway & 31 Street, QN
• Ditmars #2, QN
• Far Rockaway, QN
• Queens Village, QN
• Queens Borough Hall, QN
• Steinway #2, QN
• Sunnyside, QN

NYC DOT created an online feedback portal to gather public input about carshare parking locations, which launched in June 2017 and remained open for comments until October 2017. We received more than 550 map comments with recommendations and local knowledge to help inform our on-street carshare siting process.

We're taking your suggestions for carshare locations and incorporating them wherever they are feasible. We are also taking into consideration your feedback about places that carshare companies should avoid -- and we thank you for that input as well. If you would like to see what your neighbors recommended, feel free to visit our feedback portal where your public comments will remain online through the pilot launch: 

http://nycdotfeedbackportals.nyc/nycdot-carshare-pilot

You will be able to park at  the curb everywhere you currently can, except where there is a designated carshare parking space. Other than designating the specific carshare parking spaces to be used for the duration of the program, the NYC DOT Carshare Pilot does not change any curbside regulations in your neighborhood.

In order to support a reliable alternative to personal car-ownership, carshare parking spaces are regulated Others No Standing Anytime, which means only carshare vehicles are allowed to park in those spaces. All non-carshare vehicles, including those with NYC DOT Parking Permits for People With Disabilities, may not stand at this location. 

On-street carshare spaces allocated for this pilot were previously regulated by Alternate Side Parking. Any curb regulations that allowed permit or placard use were not included in this pilot. 

By participating in this pilot, carshare companies must also provide a vehicle with professionally installed hand controls to any carshare member within 48 hours of that member’s request.

The NYC DOT Carshare Pilot is a two-year pilot program that DOT launched May 31, 2018. We believe that the pilot needs to be in place for two years in order to provide enough time for residents to adjust their mobility patterns and reassess their car ownership decisions. The agency will collect data continuously throughout the pilot and share reports about pilot's progress on an annual basis. 

NYC DOT will be conducting a rigorous evaluation of this two-year pilot to determine whether New York City receives the benefits to expanding access to carshare that other cities have experienced. This pilot will help inform and determine the agency's long-term approach to carshare. 

The NYC DOT Carshare Pilot will create carshare parking spaces for the use of specific participating carshare companies on-street in select neighborhoods, and in municipal parking facilities citywide.

Signs at the curb and in parking facilities will clearly mark the Others No Standing carshare curbside regulation along with the name of the carshare company that is permitted to use the space. Pedestrian-level signage on the same sign poles will explain, in multiple languages, the new use of the curb, the goals of the carshare pilot, and how New Yorkers can become carshare members to take advantage of this new mobility option. 

Sign up directly with Zipcar and/or Enterprise CarShare to take advantage of this pilot program. 

NYC DOT will monitor and evaluate the pilot's impact on New Yorkers' mobility, car ownership, and curb access before determining a long-term carshare policy or program. 

New Yorkers should apply for carshare membership directly with Zipcar and/or Enterprise CarShare and expect to provide information such as a driver's license and form of payment. 

Following best practices learned from other cities, carshare parking spaces will have signs to clearly designate each space. These signs will have the regulation OTHERS NO STANDING, meaning that non-carshare vehicles may not stand at this location. Non-carshare vehicles may not wait or stop to load/unload packages or merchandise at curbside, although they may stop to expeditiously drop off or pick up passengers. If a non-carshare vehicle is found in a carshare parking space, NYPD is authorized to ticket and tow the illegally parked vehicle.

Carshare companies are also authorized to relocate illegally parked vehicles to the nearest legal curbside space (at no charge to the car owner), though this is not in effect at this time.

In addition to curb regulation signs, there will be pedestrian-level signage in English and Spanish explaining the new use of the curb, the aims of the pilot, and how New Yorkers can become carshare members to take advantage of this new mobility option. 

​​​​​​Carshare companies participating in this pilot must provide a vehicle with professionally installed hand controls to any carshare member within 48 hours of the request.