ZipCar Comes To Alameda
Lucinda Ryan reports for ‘Alameda County‘ - apparently, a publication of the San Jose Mercury News - that ZipCar is now in Alameda:
A Prius in the South Shore Beach and Tennis Club parking lot is available for anyone in town who wants a car for an hour or for a few days.
Alameda’s first Zipcar has arrived, bringing with it an opportunity for carless folks, particularly folks who prefer to be carless, to run errands that don’t go so well by bicycle or public transit, big shopping trips or a weekend in the mountains. Zipcar is among other companies that work with cities and owners of multi-unit properties to place a variety of cars, from Mini Coopers to BMWs.
Zipcar spokeswoman Kristina Kennedy said the shared car system — also in place in Berkeley, San Francisco and other Bay Area cities, as well 28 states and Europe — has resulted in taking the equivalent of 15 cars off the road.
That’s an astounding statistic — one that I believe is especially promising for us bike folks.
If someone gets rid of their private car, they’re going to have to figure out different ways to get around. The great thing about car-sharing is that there really is a disincentive to use the car unless you really need it - because it costs money to use it. So, at first people tend to not make trips, then they try to use transit or just try to walk. And then they experiment with something they’d seen other people do before but never really gave it much serious thought - they bike. And they realize that there is no disincentive to biking - except, perhaps, experiencing some stress from scary cars. If they own a bike, or can borrow or rent a bike easily and cheaply, their disincentive to ride somewhere becomes very low. And they may think, ‘This is good - for me, for the environment, for my pocketbook/wallet’ - and now they’re a biker.
One of the first things that Austin CarShare did when they started up, I’m told, is to pre-install roof-mounted bike racks — to allow biker folks to ride to the car pickup locations, and then back from the car’s drop-off locations. This effectively extended the area of folks who could consider using the service. Austin is not as dense as San Francisco, so this seemed like a neat adaptation. This bike-racks-on-car-sharing-cars was the first indication that I saw of the complementary nature of the relationship between car-sharing programs and biking.
Previous coverage of Zipcar here.
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