$100 a Month For Uber: The New Apartment Amenity

• May 26, 2016

by Nena Perry-Brown

A rendering of one of the newer Park Merced buildings

Recent urban development and demand for city living have gone hand-in-hand with the promotion of walkable neighborhoods and car-free lifestyles.

Now, a property management company in San Francisco is making a splash with its newly-adopted approach to discourage driving among its residents, giving them a $100 monthly stipend to use on Uber and Clipper, the Bay Area’s equivalent of a Smartrip card. Prospective renters will be offered a free Uber ride to and from the apartment complex.

Fast Company reports that the program at Parkmerced comes as the developers plan to construct an additional 9,000 units on the site, but likely not an equivalent number of parking spaces.

DC developers are quite familiar with these types of car-free incentives, as these sort of benefits often go hand-in-hand with requests for parking relief in newly-constructed residential and mixed-use buildings.

For example, Douglas Development plans to offer residents of their under-construction mixed-use building at 5th and H Streets NE a one-year Capital Bikeshare membership, a car-share membership and a $100 SmarTrip card. At the redevelopment of Dupont Circle’s Patterson House, where no parking spaces will be constructed, residents will receive up to five years of paid carshare and Bikeshare memberships.

While transit concierges and monthly Uber stipends may not become standard, expect to see a lot more developments offering shared transit incentives as a solution to urban density.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/how_developers_incentivize_car-free_living/11282