And with the knowledge that owning a car isn't necessary, Newenhouse has become a vocal proponent of car sharing, which combines the primary use of public transportation with short-term car rentals for trips beyond transit lines. Car-sharing companies lease or buy new cars and, with member fees, cover the costs of maintenance, repair, gas and insurance. Members pay only for the time and mileage they use. Fees vary depending on the city and company, but generally consist of an application fee (about $25), a base fee per hour (typically between $4 and $10) and a fee per mile driven (usually about 40 cents).
About a dozen cities around the country participate in car sharing; Newenhouse wants Madison to join the group. Her consulting firm, Madison Environmental Group, is using a grant from the state Department of Transportation to study whether residents will warm to the idea of car sharing. Newenhouse is particularly interested in the impact such a program would have on the city's climate-change action plan. "If we can reduce car trips, that's one of the biggest contributions we can make to air quality," she says. Once her company completes the study, Newenhouse hopes to partner with the city of Madison to jump-start the car-sharing concept in the Midwest.
Even in places where car sharing has existed for several years, however, numerous challenges remain. The car-sharing companies' biggest hurdle: familiarizing people with the concept, then winning them over. Many people can see the benefits of car sharing, but the American romance with roads--even traffic-jammed, construction-plagued roads--continues. The companies must convince drivers of the convenience in reserving, driving and parking the cars to transform car owners into car sharers, a job some of them are accomplishing with the help of partners.
Local governments are providing marketing and parking spots convenient to transit, some of the tools car-sharing companies need most. The cities have a vested interest in seeing the concept take off: Faced with increasing traffic congestion and worsening air quality, they want--and in many cases, need--to get cars off the road. The current estimate is that every car-share vehicle substitutes for as many as 10 privately owned cars. While that alone won't solve the nation's traffic woes, Jeff Parenti, a traffic engineer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, thinks it's a good start. "We'll always have the car as our primary mode of transportation. But the idea that you can walk a mile to get milk, or bike in 35-degree weather, keeps traffic down. The attitude is more important than auto emissions or the actual quantifiable effect on traffic."
Car sharing has been popular in Europe since the 1970s--companies there count hundreds of thousands of members--but in the United States, the concept is barely out of infancy. The first American car- sharing company appeared in Portland, Oregon, in 1998, and it wasn't until early 2000 that large-scale companies began operating. Neil Peterson started Flexcar, one of the two major, multi-city car-sharing companies, in Seattle in January 2000 after witnessing the success of car sharing in Europe firsthand. "It's a way to better utilize all the benefits of automobiles and to reduce air pollution, congestion and make communities more livable," he says.
But turning his European fantasy into real-world American profitability proved to be tough. "I knew that given the economic state of affairs, there was no way government agencies were going to get involved in financing this kind of initiative," he says, adding that he also was sure that the benefits of car sharing were enough to interest officials in developing public-private partnerships.
Peterson was correct on both counts. Even in the flush years of the late 1990s, public funds for transportation were stretched thin by road construction and new lines of rail development. But officials in cities such as Seattle, Boston and San Francisco saw potential in car sharing. To Washington, D.C., car sharing is a way to capitalize on its already booming Metrorail system; with more than 600,000 rides daily, the subway system is the second busiest in the country. "We don't see ourselves as only a traditional transit provider," says Lora Byala, a transportation analyst for the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority. "We've wanted to add other features, and car sharing is another piece of the puzzle. It's an added incentive to use public transit."
Peterson agrees, but he points to an added attraction of car sharing: The concept acknowledges that transit can't get you everywhere. "It says to the transit folks, there are times when transit doesn't make sense, but there are times when it makes a lot of sense," he says. "You can have your cake and eat it, too."
Flexcar signed a contract with the District of Columbia late last year. The city doesn't pay the company anything, but the transit agency has provided hot commodities in Washington: reserved parking spots at Metro stations and advertising promotions throughout the city. The program caught on quickly, as the company added 22 cars within its first six months and has expanded from eight original Metro stations to 17.
At the same time Peterson set up shop in Seattle, another car-sharing company started across the country in Massachusetts. Zipcar, which has about 2,500 members, flourished originally in Cambridge, home to Harvard and MIT, and other nearby suburbs of Boston. Once the company broke into the downtown Boston market, it became profitable after just 15 months. Last year, Zipcar also began operating in New York City and Washington, D.C. (the only city to currently have competing car- sharing businesses). The cities' dense cores make them pedestrian- and bike-friendly and are key to car sharing's success. "The older cities fundamentally have been built around transit," says Zipcar's Mark Chase. "We're a tangible example of how we can't come into a car-based suburb." For car sharing to take off, he adds, a community needs about 10,000 people per square mile.
Car sharing's popularity in Boston also has been helped by the city's willingness to help Zipcar jump hurdles. Like Washington, Boston hasn't given financial support to the company, although it provides parking spaces at transit lots and promotes the concept through newsletters and community meetings. But the most significant impact has been the work the city has done with developers by requiring that they provide reserved car-sharing spots in new parking lots. "We've made it almost mandatory, depending on how big the building is," says Vineet Gupta, director of planning for Boston's transportation department. "It's just like asking for spaces for vanpools or bike racks."
Also on Boston's car-sharing agenda is revising some zoning regulations to make it easier to reserve spaces in existing residential buildings. "Part of the success of car sharing is proximity of the parked cars to a captive residential community," Gupta says. But in most cities, car sharing--and more specifically where the cars are parked--is not addressed by zoning. Without the law on car sharing's side, some might argue that the reserved spaces amount to running a business out of a residential zone.
Some of the most loyal car sharers come from city government itself. In Seattle, there's even a Flexcar office in the municipal building. As part of Washington State's 20-year effort to reduce commute times, Seattle in March began offering a $15 subsidy toward the $25 one-time membership fee for Flexcar to the first 1,000 city employees who sign up. They also receive a $35 credit for the first two months of use. Moreover, employees can participate in car sharing while conducting city business; Seattle has purchased $50 worth of credit per month to encourage its workers to use the Flexcars for job-related meetings and appointments.
The city of Greenbelt, Maryland, has taken government sponsorship of car sharing to an even higher level. Built during the 1930s, Greenbelt was one of the first planned communities in the country and emphasized pedestrian access over the automobile. This has left it with a dense core that lacks the parking spaces current times demand. In addition, the city council has a reputation for sensitivity to environmental issues and has searched for ways to decrease air pollution. The combination of these factors led Greenbelt to car sharing, says city manager Michael McLaughlin.
The city of 21,000 knew it wasn't an obvious choice for a fledgling car-sharing company to set up shop, so it decided to subsidize a pilot project. It leases two cars from Zipcar for $1,200 a month each, with one stationed at a senior citizens' complex and another downtown, available to both residents and city employees. The costs to the city are offset by the money seniors spend to rent the vehicles and the savings Greenbelt incurs by not having to reimburse city employees for work-related car mileage.
Greenbelt isn't the only city shelling out some cash to encourage car sharing. Across the Potomac River, the city of Alexandria, Virginia, reimburses up to $105 in membership and application fees for residents. Officials have also encouraged businesses to join by reimbursing a portion of their employees' membership and application fees. "Why not do it, if it's free?" asks Paul DeMaio, the city's traffic-calming coordinator. "We want people to think differently."
