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Society
Clearing the
Roads
Would you give up your car if
you could share one instead? How a hot concept could ease
gridlock
By MARGOT ROOSEVELT
ROBBIE MCCLARAN FOR TIME HELP AT HOME: Steelquist sold one of her family
cars and uses a Flexcar to drive her son Reuben around Seattle
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Monday, Feb.
14, 2005
Grace Kim refuses to own a car. But at least once a month, the
Seattle architect drives 30 miles to the suburbs to visit her
mother. If she's in the mood, she'll cruise out to the airport to
pick up friends. Occasionally, she wants a car to lug home groceries
in bulk or try a new restaurant across town. And when clients need
to visit a building site, Kim is at the wheel.
All that's possible because Kim and her husband, architect
Michael Mariano, are members of Flexcar, one of more than a dozen
car-sharing companies revving up across the U.S. As such, the pair
have only to jump on the Internet or call a local number to reserve
one of several vehicles parked in their neighborhood. They can
choose between a Honda, a Lexus, a minivan for carting equipment or,
for a jaunty weekend outing, a silver Mazda Miata. They can enter
the car any time of night or day with a security-coded electronic
card, get charged by the hour thanks to an in-car transmitter, and
receive the bill at the end of the month. "We're ecstatic," says
Kim.
You
don't have to own a well to get water or a generator to get
electricity. Must you own a car (or two or three) to drive? "You can
join a mobility plan, like you join a cell-phone plan," says Dan
Sturges, a transportation researcher for WestStart, a nonprofit
based in Pasadena, Calif. "It is self-service, on-demand, pay as you
go. And you get different vehicles for different needs."
It's a new way of thinking for the U.S.'s gridlocked
cities--hassle-free, hourly rental, a concept that has been popular
in Europe for two decades. For every vehicle in a car-sharing fleet,
transportation planners say about 10 cars are taken off the roads.
Moreover, when drivers pay by the hour, they tend to drive less.
They walk more, take the occasional bus or clump their errands
together in one trip. While car sharing is now available in nine big
cities and a score of smaller towns, in many places the operations
are still seedling, with just a few cars. Expansion is under way,
however, and car-sharing companies plan to bring the service to more
than two dozen major metropolitan areas--a trend that could
eventually remove tens of thousands of cars from the highways,
reducing pollution, energy use and congestion.
Cities love the idea and are actively encouraging it. In Seattle,
the municipal government runs a "One Car Challenge," doling out $50
a month in free Flexcar use for a year to people who can prove they
sold their family's second car in favor of car sharing. In Portland,
Ore., people whose automobiles fail emissions tests get $500 worth
of free Flexcar use if they junk their cars. Outside Washington, the
Virginia suburbs of Alexandria and Arlington pay membership fees for
any residents who want to join a car-sharing plan. In Greenbelt,
Md., the city leases a vehicle from Zipcar, a Massachusetts-based
car-sharing firm, stationing it at a senior-citizens complex and
renting it to elderly residents for only $1 an hour. And in
Philadelphia, officials are auctioning off 329 vehicles from the
municipal fleet and using PhillyCarShare, a local nonprofit, as an
alternative. Projected savings: $1 million a year.
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From the Feb. 21,
2005 issue of TIME magazine
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