VANCOUVER -- A B.C. car-share company is setting aside a portion of its fleet specifically for health-care workers to use.
Evo Car Share says 250 of its vehicles will be reserved for health-care workers, and they won't even have to share vehicles with each other.
"We heard anecdotally some pain points from health-care workers saying they were have trouble getting to work. We knew we had an asset we could lend to them," said Eric Hopkins, president and CEO of BCAA, which operates Evo.
Instead, each health-worker that needs transportation will have use of their own vehicle for free until the end of May, with the possibility of extension.
Evo says each vehicle will be sanitized and fuelled up for the workers to help them "continue to carry out their heroic work" during the COVID-19 pandemic. Seventy vehicles are already assigned to specific health-care workers, the car-share company says, and it's working with local health authorities to identify other workers in need.
"We're really able to get that vehicle directly to that worker, to those people that need it most," Hopkins said.
As well, the health-care workers don't need to be an Evo member to use the vehicle and instead are given a free membership.
Last month, Evo issued a message to its members asking them to only use vehicles for essential trips, like getting groceries, medication or going to work.
"We've asked all of our Evo members to frankly drive a lot less," Hopkins said.
Hopkins said Evo doesn't have a timeline for how long the entire program will run and will continue to evaluate it as the novel coronavirus pandemic unfolds.
