Zip Car is a great service. It is innovative and environmentally conscious.
If Boston is going to
going to continue to grow and prosper we need to reduce traffic congestion. Reduce
traveling time to communities and towns well beyond the center of the city.
One private enterprise solutions to such a challenge is facilitating
car pooling. Zipcar has a tremendous about of data about their users. Where
they live, work, schedules etc. They could invited, purpose, and offer
discounts to groups of people who might be interested in car pooling, they
could arrange and purpose mutually convenient times.
Another option would be to actually run a minivan service-
while a deviation from their current core business the company it is consistent
with its vision:
“We envision a future where car-sharing members outnumber car owners in major
cities around the globe. Most residents of these cities will live within a
five-to-ten-minute walk of a self-service Zipcar. Zipcar will be an integral
part of these vibrant communities of well-informed, connected people who enjoy
urban life and transportation options.”
Zipcar is in a positions to optimize routes, times and passengers,
it could proved a solution that is possibly more convenient than the public
options
I’ve been a ZipCar member and user pretty much from the beginning, I love and utilize the concept. Nonetheless, there are some real issues with the approach you describe that I think may be beyond the capabilities of a private company like ZipCar.
The issue is that each ZipCar has to be returned to its designated parking space after each use. No matter how suburban workers get into the city, if they use a ZipCar to travel the last leg to their office, there will still be a concentration of cars around that office that will sit unused all day and be driven back to their “home” at the end of each day. Meanwhile, with current ZipCar technology, each of those would be a full-day rental — and ZipCar is no less expensive per day than any other rental company. A better approach is to find a way to use ZipCar just long enough to go from one space to another, so that the ZipCars can be used during each day by others (a one-way rental).
In the long run, I think we need to move away from the concept of an automobile as a personal possession and towards a society where an automobile is viewed as part of a transportation system — at least for day-to-day commuting. The question of how commuters get from their home to an access point still needs to be answered; once in the system, they could pick up an individual vehicle (or car-share) when their mass transit vehicle arrives in the city and use it to get to their work. When a worker needs a vehicle during the day (for meetings or appointments, for example), they could use them like a ZipCar. The vehicles would migrate back towards the mass transit stations at the end of the day, and the process could reverse.
The real, gut-wrenching change will be for our culture to give up the idea of the commuting vehicle being an expression of an owner’s personality.
I don’t see much sense in ZipCar feeding commuters into and out of outlying mass transit points. The amount of capital (cars) that would be stranded out in the suburbs, where people already have cars, doesn’t make sense.
Maybe what you want is “ZipSeats,” an on-line ride share program. But then that scheme would likely be regulated by the state and the feds as public transit (gotta protect those union jobs!)
If it weren’t for these regulations, I could start a jitney service with a 10-seat van, pick commuters up to-and-from outlying mass transit locations.
The benefit of the concept is to reduce the number of trips made by vehicles into and out of the city. Fewer trips mean less air pollution, less CO2, less wear-and-tear, and so on.
I agree that the question of what to do at the outer boundary remains unsolved. Having said that, a car sitting in a mass transit parking lot is not polluting the atmosphere, emitting CO2, or wearing out our transportation infrastructure.
Many people want access to a car because they (a) want to be able to come and go when they choose, (b) want direct point-to-point transit, (c) want privacy while they travel, and (d) want to get there quickly. Shared one-way automobiles promise to provide all that (as do shared one-way bicycles, I might add). The major price a shared-car approach demands is for workers to give up the idea that they own the car they use for work.
For me, this is a small price to pay. Others may, however, disagree — I’ve never been particularly attached to my vehicles.
If I take a one-way auto into work, and park it there, after which someone else leaving that same point picks it up and drives it one-way to their destination wherever it may be, etc., that process might reduce congestion in town, but does it reduce miles driven?
Instead of my car driving 50 miles today, and sitting parked for 23 hours, I drive cars 50 miles, and those cars will be driven all day by others.
I suppose that something like this could work if the cost savings is sufficiently big, but that seems like a pretty big if you have in there:
IF only we can get the entire American society to significantly alter their culture and, to a degree, change human nature, then we can achieve the following environmental benefits… This sounds a bit like: IF only we can convince unmarried people to abstain from having sex then we can achieve the following wonderful benefits…
Not impossible to change things, but that would be a tough sell.
All that said, I thought that you could return a zip car to any zipcar parking spot– not necessarily the one at which you picked up the car.
The suggestion is that you somehow get a one-way trip to a mass-transit station very close to your home, then ride a bus or train.
The idea is to make the one-way in-city car-share convenient enough that you don’t miss having your own vehicle. So you ride a train or bus for each 25-mile leg in and out of the city, and use a shared vehicle for any trips within the city.
Currently, each ZipCar has a “home” parking spot to which it must be returned.
This is a test of whether returns give us paragraphs.
Does this work? Do I have paragraphs?
Hello? Paragraphs?
If you pay the full cost of driving the car at the time you drive the car [not car payments for a few years, insurance payments every 3/6 months, gas once every two weeks, parking each time, etc], then you change your driving habits. You combine trips. You shop locally by foot or bike, or even by car because it’s not worth the drive to State Line Liquors. You buy more online, perhaps even groceries. You start riding a bicycle more often, and taking local mass transit. It’s incremental, and the effect is different for each individual.
Furthermore, with fewer autos, we demand fewer parking spaces. Now, there’s more room for bike lanes, for wider sidewalks with cafe tables, for street trees. There’s also more room for businesses to be closer together [fewer parking spaces separating them], resulting in an even more inviting commercial area for those who are moving from store to store on foot. Same goes for housing — it’s easier to put more housing near mass transit if less land area (or money for the car park structure) goes to parking lots.
Of course, if local users spend less money on autos, gasoline, and insurance — all of which leaves the local and often state economy — then they’ve got more money to spend on manicures and dining out and going to the opera, and that’s a big benefit to local jobs.
All those cars sitting around between 9 and 5 in business districts could be used by gov’t agencies to conduct day to day business. This not only means that the commuter need not rent the car for the full day (making it financially practical), but the municipality saves on the costs of maintaining it’s fleet of gov’t vehicles.
This is already being explored in NYC and I can’t imagine that it’s not being looked at in other cities, as well.
Full disclaimer, I once served as chief of staff to then City Councilor Paul Scapicchio, who now serves as ZipCar’s lobbyist on Beacon Hill.
Is it just me, or does the grammar in this article/commentary make the point incredibly difficult to understand?