I have been a resident in West LA for the past two years, and have been living and working here without an automobile for the last year and a half. I realize that it is impractical for everyone to live as I do - cycling and bussing to get where I need to go, living in a location where everything I need is within a close distance - but feel very passionately that a strongly auto-reliant culture carries with it many negative and unhealthy consequences.
Last year, I joined Flexcar, a car-sharing program based out of Portland. The shared cars were extremely helpful for personal errands that demanded greater flexiblity or larger loads to be hauled (doctor's appointments, trips to the hardware store, etc.). Flexcar had many cars throughout the greater Los Angeles area, including several in my area of town. Everything was great, and I had felt that I had adequately proven that one can lead a normal life in LA without owning an automobile.
Recently, Zipcar, a car-sharing program based out of Boston, has bought out Flexcar, and has brought their brand and ownership policies to Southern California. Flexcar members were made aware of the aquisition at the end of last year, and were welcomed by Zipcar to seemlessly switch their Flexcar plan to a comparable Zipcar plan. I followed suit, joining Zipcar two weeks ago, and waiting for the folks at Zipcar to transition the old Flexcars to new Zipcars.
However, unfortunately, I received the following email this morning:
Jack,
Car sharing is an evolving category of transportation, and we are working hard to pioneer the industry. We are constantly learning more about the best way to operate our service, and sometimes what we learn results in a tough decision.
In Southern California, we have decided to remove our vehicles from areas outside of the universities we serve (cars will remain at UCLA, USC, Pomona, UCSB, UCSD and UCI).
This was a difficult decision for us, and we understand it may present significant inconvenience for you. We apologize for that.
Reservations for all affected locations have been canceled and fully credited. Further, we have refunded annual membership fees for all members who paid an annual fee within the past nine months. Your refund will appear in your account automatically. If you have questions about your refund, please contact us at info@zipcar.com
We realize that you recently activated your Zipcard. We'd like to encourage you to use it by placing a *new* $25 driving credit into your account. Hopefully, you'll reserve a vehicle at one of our university locations in Southern California or in any other city where we provide service. If you have further questions, do not hesitate to contact us at info@zipcar.com
The team at Zipcar
This is incredibly disheartening news, especially since former Flexcar members were lead to believe that the same (and even better) service would continue under the new provider. I have written to Zipcar the following comment:
To ZipCar:
Your recent decision to reduce the fleet of cars in Southern California is incredibly disappointing. In a city that exemplifies the negative conse quences of car ownership, such as Los Angeles, it is inconceivable to me why Zipcar would overtake a community-serving company, such as Flexcar, only to dissolve the advances it has made in the Los Angeles area over the past five years. I now regret your presence in Southern California, and wish you could have stayed in Northern California and the East coast, where you could continue to pander to elitist academics without taking the necessary steps for real change to our ill-fated, auto-loving culture. Please close my two-week old account, and refund the annual charge. Thanks.
I have also requested my membership to be cancelled, as it is virtually worthless to me now.
This turn of events seems like a situation that has taken two steps backward, where the previous company was making advances. Please spread the word about this pitifully ironic tale of car-culture nonsense. Perhaps we can get a meaningful car-sharing alternative for Los Angeles out of it.
In Southern California, we have decided to remove our vehicles from areas outside of the universities we serve (cars will remain at UCLA, USC, Pomona, UCSB, UCSD and UCI).
i had a similar existence while living in ann arbor, michigan...didn't own a car, mostly walked or bussed. nothing like a zipcar or flexcar sharing plan available to me so i just rented when needed.
turned out that i needed a car less than once per month but since i was a regular customer at enterprise they'd often email me discounts. compared to owning a car, renting proved to be the wise thing to do both financially & ecologically. might not be as efficient or convenient as flexcar but not a bad alternative either.
I dislike personal vehicles for a number of reasons, the least of which is pollution. I dislike their styling, their scale (even compacts are often too large for what they're used for, which is 90% solo driving), the lifestyle they facilitate, blah blah blah.
I think these car sharing programs are a good compromise. Its sad that Zipcar wasn't going to make enough profit in SoCal for whatever reason. Perhaps if the economic downturn is great enough people will begin to start sacrificing convenience.
I've been a zipcar member for 4 years and it is maybe the single best run company of any product I've probably ever had the pleasure of doing business with. Of course I'm in boston where they've got about a billion cars, but still it's a great service.
That sucks about LA, especially since I may be moving there this year.
I'm guessing that flexcar was not profiting in Los Angeles, so they sold out to Zipcar, which i'm fairly certain is the largest car sharing company in the world at this point. ZC probably thought they could handle, then realized to stay profitable in LA they had to stick to the campuses. That is pretty much their model in low density cities. They have cars in nyc, chicago, london, and boston, and all the other cities are around campuses.
If there was money to be made in your neighborhood, they would definitely still be there.
I use ZipCar all of the time for weekly project meetings due to the fact I don't want to put the mileage on my car, and it's truly a blessing.
They're not at all attractive cars in my area so I would never drive one to a regular client meeting instead of my own car, but taking it to the construction site is great. You just drive it anywhere you want, beat the hell out of it, and return it quasi-working with some gas which they pay for anyway.
Other than those positives, the company seems to not be able to handle the growth they've experienced. The cars I've gotten are never serviced, they're filthy, and emails that go to them just go unanswered.
If my company wasn't footing the tab I definitely wouldn't be putting any money their way.
well, from what I can tell from reading online, these companies technically merged.
but maybe it was a buyout? was flex-car just not making ends meet and looked to zipcar to buy them out? hard to say. maybe these spots in LA would have disappeared anyway.
I use Zipcar in SF and love it. I'm certain the cost in LA for parking is so much less of an issue, you have to really wonder what the problem was. I'm assuming its just that no one used them?
But still, to close all non- campus locations? how many/frequent were they?
jackjood....hi! I am just like you, except I live in downtown LA, and I've only been here since August.
Having only been a member of ZipCar for a week or so now, I haven't had that much experience with them yet. However, I did try to reserve a couple of cars and the only ones that came up were on my campus (USC), and the whole point of getting a car was so I didn't have to go down there. Now I understand why the ones behind my building weren't showing up....they apparently weren't there anymore.
This is very disheartening news. One of the reasons I didn't bring my car out here with me was knowing I could join FlexCar would make it easier for me. Lucky for me, there were some in the garage behind my building! Which was awesome. Now this....and then the fact that I spent about 3 hours on buses in the cold rain today....doesn't help my carless cause.
I am now considering canceling my membership as well. It's basically impractical for me, unless I want to go down to campus to get a car all the time. Did you notice the price on all the cars went up as well?
Does anyone know of a major "normal" car rental company that rents hybrids? That's the only reason I'd stick with ZipCar, because they rent hybrids and I have not found a major rental company that does.....
Sounds like a lot of whining to me...can't you just appreciate the car lovingness of LA and I get on with it, I find it to be quite spectacular myself.
jackjood & emily: same here. got the email from zipcar this morning and thought "what the fuck?!" If the car I need once or twice a month is 5+ miles away from me... then why don't I just take the bus to my destination?
i think the flexcar/zipcar model is a good idea, but i'm unimpressed by the implementation. more cars at more locations is the direction it needs to go to attract more members, not fewer (obviously).
anyway, cancelled zipcar membership this morning. fuck it. with no zipcars in downtown LA, plain ol' rental cars (enterprise) make more sense.
@gypsy: fuck you and your car-lovingness. what love is there for cars in LA? we love them when they're in the driveway... shiny, clean, sexy, and full of promise. but on the 405... during rush hour...
ahhh, the freedom to spend several hours each day trapped in a steel box, with several million other angelenos, waiting for your accident to happen...
jackwood, that is awful! As FlexCar had already laid the groundwork, a concious company working for change (and not just immediate payback) could have chosen to further that effort and reaped long-term profits. In any case, from the perspective of long-term business-view, it seems silly to not be ready to take advantage of the changing culture with respect to car-ownership--gas prices are up, cars are gettting smaller and more fuel-efficient, the demand for alternatively fueled vehicles is skyrocketing, and cities everywhere are starting to pour money into mass transit. Duh, the world is changing ZipCar, you could be ahead of the curve if you chose...
Shame.
For me, living in two large metropolitan cities served by ZipCar/FlexCar, like puddles I could never make the economics of it work... still can't. The thing I don't understand is that if you're going to, say, a doctor's appointment, you will be there for an hour; therefore, why pay for the car for 2 hours if it's only going to sit there for 1hour? (AND you have to find parking for it?!) Taking a cab both ways ends up being cheaper, quicker, and less hassle. Really the only possible way that ZipCar could ever work for me is if I could pick up a car in one location and drop it off in another--similar to taking a cab--but this will never happen. If I need a car for longer periods then renting it is cheaper.
So in a city with easily accessible cabs I see absolutely no reason to ever use a car-sharing service where you have to return the car to the same place.
I've debating selling my car and getting a Zipcar account, but being in the Boston area I don't have the limitations that it seems like LA has.
Something that might be worth checking out is Goloco, a ride-sharing program that was started about a year or so ago by the same woman that started ZipCar. Unfortunately you need to be on Facebook now to use their interface (a dumb move, IMHO), but it may help you out from time to time. It doesn't have the immediacy of Zipcar, but might fill the gaps for daily commutes and other mundane trips where a rental car might not make as much sense.
And get a bike. I know people that ride ~30 miles round trip for their commute in LA and swear its the best thing ever. Just ride the bike to the closest Zipcar spot, lock it up, and then drive away into the sunset!!
-A taxi is great but in LA, a taxi could be $25 in one direction for where you need to go. So letting the car sit for an hour is actually more cost effective, especially if they are only $10 an hour.
-Walking, again, a great idea, if you live in Manhattan. But here in LA I have friends that live 15-20 miles in either direction. If you do your math, you'll realize that's 3 Manhattans long. It's no one's fault, that is just the nature of the beast out here.
-I have a bike, and I love using it. However, I've had the cough from hell the past couple of days and it was raining anyway, so it sure would have been nice to use a shared car, as opposed to being on a bus that the driver decided to stop because he had a fogged up mirror. (Um....my glasses were fogged up. That doesn't mean I stopped walking....)
Anyway, if LA had a more effective public transportation system this would all be moot, but I think the car companies have had this city by the balls for a while, and the current government looks just as lame as the previous ones. So, we're damned if we do. Period.
admittedly, all forms of transportation (taxi, walking, etc) have their limitations...but i think my point was to use each of them to their strength. as someone who lived in a mid-sized city with limited public transit (ann arbor, mi) for several years without owning a car i know that it's possible to get most places needed without owning a car (or even having access to a zipcar-like share system). it takes some work & strategic effort but it's nice to realize that you can live against the grain.
for the most part during those years, i was able to get to everyplace that i needed to be. between walking, taxi, bus, amtrak train, rental car, bicycling, jet airplane and occasional rides from friends/family then there was really no overwhelming reason to buy/lease car except for the "luxury" of avoiding all those transit options.
As the Recovering Automotive Enthusiast, I have to respond. I've been a member of flexcar for a few years. I'd rent a vehicle for a day, then detail it in the wee hours of the night (you know, to absorb the design), clay barring the Santa Monica Civic Hybrid (the salt air) or the USC Element (why park it under a Jacaranda Tree?!). I could drive my efficient car and get something from flexcar if my car wasn't up to the task.
In 1998, the Los Angeles Times had an article on car sharing in Germany. What started out as an idealistic endeavor became a meagerly profitable business.
It's kinda pricey. It may not work well in Los Angeles now. But it's something I support, on idealistic grounds. With zipcar, they're back to square one. When I joined flexcar back then, they had about a dozen cars in downtown L.A. , Long Beach, Burbank, Pasadena and USC. Last I checked, zipcar has about a dozen cars around some of the college campuses.
Give it a chance, guys. Use it, and we'll get more vehicles.
Actually, per Emily's points above, I could actually see zipcar making much MORE sense in auto-centric cities, for two reasons :
a) cabs are not as plentiful/easy to use b/c of burned up time in traffic
b) parking is easy to find and cheap, so you are not burning car rental time while the car sits in the parking lot of your errand destination.
It is precisely in cities like Chicago, NYC, and Boston that the car-sharing makes no sense to me. Density (causing close to zero parking options/ability) + good public transit + small-scale, walkable communities (subsets of the larger city, in the cases of Chicago and NYC) + cabs used to helping you haul your groceries/laundry = very little need for a flexcar. LA, Atlanta, etc are pretty much the opposite model of those cities, and thus make MUCH more sense to me for car sharing.
I'm with puddles--use each mode to its strength. I completely agree and live my own life that way.
I flew down to LA a month ago - rented a car - and almost killed myself for doing so. Cause I remember the last time I was there all I did was sit in traffic and drive around in circles trying to leave "downtown" - Where the real public transportation when you need it. I guess I could always take the train up and down the hill at the Getty Center
Sorry for wasting your click...but arent you friends w/ mdler the thread crasher? - MDLER...you da man!
should check out vancouver's non-profit version - cooperative auto network (CAN). zipcar moved in last year to go head to head. can't see how they'll make money competing against a co-op. i'm mostly a cyclist, and CAN was perfect when i was living there, all the convenience and none of the responsibilities of owning.
maybe someone in LA should get something like that going and make a go of it in that market. without the need for a profit, maybe the numbers add up.
as an aside, last time i was in LA, i rented a mid-size for all of $10 for the day. hard to see zip car beating that.
Mar 31, 08 2:34 pm ·
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Zipcar in LA = Dissappointment
I have been a resident in West LA for the past two years, and have been living and working here without an automobile for the last year and a half. I realize that it is impractical for everyone to live as I do - cycling and bussing to get where I need to go, living in a location where everything I need is within a close distance - but feel very passionately that a strongly auto-reliant culture carries with it many negative and unhealthy consequences.
Last year, I joined Flexcar, a car-sharing program based out of Portland. The shared cars were extremely helpful for personal errands that demanded greater flexiblity or larger loads to be hauled (doctor's appointments, trips to the hardware store, etc.). Flexcar had many cars throughout the greater Los Angeles area, including several in my area of town. Everything was great, and I had felt that I had adequately proven that one can lead a normal life in LA without owning an automobile.
Recently, Zipcar, a car-sharing program based out of Boston, has bought out Flexcar, and has brought their brand and ownership policies to Southern California. Flexcar members were made aware of the aquisition at the end of last year, and were welcomed by Zipcar to seemlessly switch their Flexcar plan to a comparable Zipcar plan. I followed suit, joining Zipcar two weeks ago, and waiting for the folks at Zipcar to transition the old Flexcars to new Zipcars.
However, unfortunately, I received the following email this morning:
Jack,
Car sharing is an evolving category of transportation, and we are working hard to pioneer the industry. We are constantly learning more about the best way to operate our service, and sometimes what we learn results in a tough decision.
In Southern California, we have decided to remove our vehicles from areas outside of the universities we serve (cars will remain at UCLA, USC, Pomona, UCSB, UCSD and UCI).
This was a difficult decision for us, and we understand it may present significant inconvenience for you. We apologize for that.
Reservations for all affected locations have been canceled and fully credited. Further, we have refunded annual membership fees for all members who paid an annual fee within the past nine months. Your refund will appear in your account automatically. If you have questions about your refund, please contact us at info@zipcar.com
We realize that you recently activated your Zipcard. We'd like to encourage you to use it by placing a *new* $25 driving credit into your account. Hopefully, you'll reserve a vehicle at one of our university locations in Southern California or in any other city where we provide service. If you have further questions, do not hesitate to contact us at info@zipcar.com
The team at Zipcar
This is incredibly disheartening news, especially since former Flexcar members were lead to believe that the same (and even better) service would continue under the new provider. I have written to Zipcar the following comment:
To ZipCar:
Your recent decision to reduce the fleet of cars in Southern California is incredibly disappointing. In a city that exemplifies the negative conse quences of car ownership, such as Los Angeles, it is inconceivable to me why Zipcar would overtake a community-serving company, such as Flexcar, only to dissolve the advances it has made in the Los Angeles area over the past five years. I now regret your presence in Southern California, and wish you could have stayed in Northern California and the East coast, where you could continue to pander to elitist academics without taking the necessary steps for real change to our ill-fated, auto-loving culture. Please close my two-week old account, and refund the annual charge. Thanks.
I have also requested my membership to be cancelled, as it is virtually worthless to me now.
This turn of events seems like a situation that has taken two steps backward, where the previous company was making advances. Please spread the word about this pitifully ironic tale of car-culture nonsense. Perhaps we can get a meaningful car-sharing alternative for Los Angeles out of it.
Thanks!
damn that sucks!
good luck with getting the money back!
buy a goddamn car!!!!!!!!!!!!!
why did flexcar allow itself to be bought out?
In Southern California, we have decided to remove our vehicles from areas outside of the universities we serve (cars will remain at UCLA, USC, Pomona, UCSB, UCSD and UCI).
that's still good isn't?
it?
Buy a cheap car with good gas mileage and call it at that.
Then wait for your Honda FCX hydrocar.
change your thinking, change the world.
save the cheerleader, save the world
that's from some TV show, isn't it.
cool.
i had a similar existence while living in ann arbor, michigan...didn't own a car, mostly walked or bussed. nothing like a zipcar or flexcar sharing plan available to me so i just rented when needed.
turned out that i needed a car less than once per month but since i was a regular customer at enterprise they'd often email me discounts. compared to owning a car, renting proved to be the wise thing to do both financially & ecologically. might not be as efficient or convenient as flexcar but not a bad alternative either.
I dislike personal vehicles for a number of reasons, the least of which is pollution. I dislike their styling, their scale (even compacts are often too large for what they're used for, which is 90% solo driving), the lifestyle they facilitate, blah blah blah.
I think these car sharing programs are a good compromise. Its sad that Zipcar wasn't going to make enough profit in SoCal for whatever reason. Perhaps if the economic downturn is great enough people will begin to start sacrificing convenience.
brer
I think people are going to move out of LA do to the economic downturn...I know I am
I hope lots of peeps leave, so I can afford to move back!
... and we'll be able to maintain the natural landscape we all love, and the beaches won't be as crowded in the summer.
if thats the case, i dont understand why flexcar or someone else wouldnt open up again under a new name. then zipcar can buy them again.
I've been a zipcar member for 4 years and it is maybe the single best run company of any product I've probably ever had the pleasure of doing business with. Of course I'm in boston where they've got about a billion cars, but still it's a great service.
That sucks about LA, especially since I may be moving there this year.
I'm guessing that flexcar was not profiting in Los Angeles, so they sold out to Zipcar, which i'm fairly certain is the largest car sharing company in the world at this point. ZC probably thought they could handle, then realized to stay profitable in LA they had to stick to the campuses. That is pretty much their model in low density cities. They have cars in nyc, chicago, london, and boston, and all the other cities are around campuses.
If there was money to be made in your neighborhood, they would definitely still be there.
I use ZipCar all of the time for weekly project meetings due to the fact I don't want to put the mileage on my car, and it's truly a blessing.
They're not at all attractive cars in my area so I would never drive one to a regular client meeting instead of my own car, but taking it to the construction site is great. You just drive it anywhere you want, beat the hell out of it, and return it quasi-working with some gas which they pay for anyway.
Other than those positives, the company seems to not be able to handle the growth they've experienced. The cars I've gotten are never serviced, they're filthy, and emails that go to them just go unanswered.
If my company wasn't footing the tab I definitely wouldn't be putting any money their way.
well, from what I can tell from reading online, these companies technically merged.
but maybe it was a buyout? was flex-car just not making ends meet and looked to zipcar to buy them out? hard to say. maybe these spots in LA would have disappeared anyway.
I use Zipcar in SF and love it. I'm certain the cost in LA for parking is so much less of an issue, you have to really wonder what the problem was. I'm assuming its just that no one used them?
But still, to close all non- campus locations? how many/frequent were they?
well, thanks for posting, I was going to join.
hmmmm
"You just drive it anywhere you want, beat the hell out of it..."
"...they're filthy..."
jackjood....hi! I am just like you, except I live in downtown LA, and I've only been here since August.
Having only been a member of ZipCar for a week or so now, I haven't had that much experience with them yet. However, I did try to reserve a couple of cars and the only ones that came up were on my campus (USC), and the whole point of getting a car was so I didn't have to go down there. Now I understand why the ones behind my building weren't showing up....they apparently weren't there anymore.
This is very disheartening news. One of the reasons I didn't bring my car out here with me was knowing I could join FlexCar would make it easier for me. Lucky for me, there were some in the garage behind my building! Which was awesome. Now this....and then the fact that I spent about 3 hours on buses in the cold rain today....doesn't help my carless cause.
I am now considering canceling my membership as well. It's basically impractical for me, unless I want to go down to campus to get a car all the time. Did you notice the price on all the cars went up as well?
Does anyone know of a major "normal" car rental company that rents hybrids? That's the only reason I'd stick with ZipCar, because they rent hybrids and I have not found a major rental company that does.....
Humph.
Sounds like a lot of whining to me...can't you just appreciate the car lovingness of LA and I get on with it, I find it to be quite spectacular myself.
jackjood & emily: same here. got the email from zipcar this morning and thought "what the fuck?!" If the car I need once or twice a month is 5+ miles away from me... then why don't I just take the bus to my destination?
i think the flexcar/zipcar model is a good idea, but i'm unimpressed by the implementation. more cars at more locations is the direction it needs to go to attract more members, not fewer (obviously).
anyway, cancelled zipcar membership this morning. fuck it. with no zipcars in downtown LA, plain ol' rental cars (enterprise) make more sense.
@gypsy: fuck you and your car-lovingness. what love is there for cars in LA? we love them when they're in the driveway... shiny, clean, sexy, and full of promise. but on the 405... during rush hour...
ahhh, the freedom to spend several hours each day trapped in a steel box, with several million other angelenos, waiting for your accident to happen...
then walk.
jackwood, that is awful! As FlexCar had already laid the groundwork, a concious company working for change (and not just immediate payback) could have chosen to further that effort and reaped long-term profits. In any case, from the perspective of long-term business-view, it seems silly to not be ready to take advantage of the changing culture with respect to car-ownership--gas prices are up, cars are gettting smaller and more fuel-efficient, the demand for alternatively fueled vehicles is skyrocketing, and cities everywhere are starting to pour money into mass transit. Duh, the world is changing ZipCar, you could be ahead of the curve if you chose...
Shame.
For me, living in two large metropolitan cities served by ZipCar/FlexCar, like puddles I could never make the economics of it work... still can't. The thing I don't understand is that if you're going to, say, a doctor's appointment, you will be there for an hour; therefore, why pay for the car for 2 hours if it's only going to sit there for 1hour? (AND you have to find parking for it?!) Taking a cab both ways ends up being cheaper, quicker, and less hassle. Really the only possible way that ZipCar could ever work for me is if I could pick up a car in one location and drop it off in another--similar to taking a cab--but this will never happen. If I need a car for longer periods then renting it is cheaper.
So in a city with easily accessible cabs I see absolutely no reason to ever use a car-sharing service where you have to return the car to the same place.
oh yeah, i would also use taxicabs too. thanks mantaray for reminding me of that part of my old diversified transit strategy.
I've debating selling my car and getting a Zipcar account, but being in the Boston area I don't have the limitations that it seems like LA has.
Something that might be worth checking out is Goloco, a ride-sharing program that was started about a year or so ago by the same woman that started ZipCar. Unfortunately you need to be on Facebook now to use their interface (a dumb move, IMHO), but it may help you out from time to time. It doesn't have the immediacy of Zipcar, but might fill the gaps for daily commutes and other mundane trips where a rental car might not make as much sense.
And get a bike. I know people that ride ~30 miles round trip for their commute in LA and swear its the best thing ever. Just ride the bike to the closest Zipcar spot, lock it up, and then drive away into the sunset!!
A couple of responses to the above points:
-A taxi is great but in LA, a taxi could be $25 in one direction for where you need to go. So letting the car sit for an hour is actually more cost effective, especially if they are only $10 an hour.
-Walking, again, a great idea, if you live in Manhattan. But here in LA I have friends that live 15-20 miles in either direction. If you do your math, you'll realize that's 3 Manhattans long. It's no one's fault, that is just the nature of the beast out here.
-I have a bike, and I love using it. However, I've had the cough from hell the past couple of days and it was raining anyway, so it sure would have been nice to use a shared car, as opposed to being on a bus that the driver decided to stop because he had a fogged up mirror. (Um....my glasses were fogged up. That doesn't mean I stopped walking....)
Anyway, if LA had a more effective public transportation system this would all be moot, but I think the car companies have had this city by the balls for a while, and the current government looks just as lame as the previous ones. So, we're damned if we do. Period.
admittedly, all forms of transportation (taxi, walking, etc) have their limitations...but i think my point was to use each of them to their strength. as someone who lived in a mid-sized city with limited public transit (ann arbor, mi) for several years without owning a car i know that it's possible to get most places needed without owning a car (or even having access to a zipcar-like share system). it takes some work & strategic effort but it's nice to realize that you can live against the grain.
for the most part during those years, i was able to get to everyplace that i needed to be. between walking, taxi, bus, amtrak train, rental car, bicycling, jet airplane and occasional rides from friends/family then there was really no overwhelming reason to buy/lease car except for the "luxury" of avoiding all those transit options.
So, it's in my blog now.
I think I might throw some extra tags on that post so it pops up when people Google ZipCar.
As the Recovering Automotive Enthusiast, I have to respond. I've been a member of flexcar for a few years. I'd rent a vehicle for a day, then detail it in the wee hours of the night (you know, to absorb the design), clay barring the Santa Monica Civic Hybrid (the salt air) or the USC Element (why park it under a Jacaranda Tree?!). I could drive my efficient car and get something from flexcar if my car wasn't up to the task.
In 1998, the Los Angeles Times had an article on car sharing in Germany. What started out as an idealistic endeavor became a meagerly profitable business.
It's kinda pricey. It may not work well in Los Angeles now. But it's something I support, on idealistic grounds. With zipcar, they're back to square one. When I joined flexcar back then, they had about a dozen cars in downtown L.A. , Long Beach, Burbank, Pasadena and USC. Last I checked, zipcar has about a dozen cars around some of the college campuses.
Give it a chance, guys. Use it, and we'll get more vehicles.
i thought ann arbor was a small town.
Actually, per Emily's points above, I could actually see zipcar making much MORE sense in auto-centric cities, for two reasons :
a) cabs are not as plentiful/easy to use b/c of burned up time in traffic
b) parking is easy to find and cheap, so you are not burning car rental time while the car sits in the parking lot of your errand destination.
It is precisely in cities like Chicago, NYC, and Boston that the car-sharing makes no sense to me. Density (causing close to zero parking options/ability) + good public transit + small-scale, walkable communities (subsets of the larger city, in the cases of Chicago and NYC) + cabs used to helping you haul your groceries/laundry = very little need for a flexcar. LA, Atlanta, etc are pretty much the opposite model of those cities, and thus make MUCH more sense to me for car sharing.
I'm with puddles--use each mode to its strength. I completely agree and live my own life that way.
CAR & LA = oxymorons
Move to a real city
Wow, what a constructive contribution to the thread. Thanks for wasting my click! ;o)
I flew down to LA a month ago - rented a car - and almost killed myself for doing so. Cause I remember the last time I was there all I did was sit in traffic and drive around in circles trying to leave "downtown" - Where the real public transportation when you need it. I guess I could always take the train up and down the hill at the Getty Center
Sorry for wasting your click...but arent you friends w/ mdler the thread crasher? - MDLER...you da man!
LA will be navigable without a car soon enough!!
should check out vancouver's non-profit version - cooperative auto network (CAN). zipcar moved in last year to go head to head. can't see how they'll make money competing against a co-op. i'm mostly a cyclist, and CAN was perfect when i was living there, all the convenience and none of the responsibilities of owning.
maybe someone in LA should get something like that going and make a go of it in that market. without the need for a profit, maybe the numbers add up.
as an aside, last time i was in LA, i rented a mid-size for all of $10 for the day. hard to see zip car beating that.
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