Lest anyone be misled that our 10:38 AM comment on Jim’s “Zipcar to Invest…” posting of 30 November was meant to suggest Zipcar should abandon its current market focus, let me be very clear:
We support Zipcar’s current focus. Our 10:38 AM post suggested additional markets, not abandonment of the primary one.
We believe strongly that every Alpha Village scale station-area urban enclave served by a high-capacity, shared-vehicle system (e.g. METRO) should have two or more Zipcar-like services.
Our only problem with Zipcars is any implication that Zipcar-like services alone, without Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns – especially in shared-vehicle station areas, will have a major impact on mobility and access.
As Jim’s post and comment suggest, he and I agree on this. We also agree that the existence of Zipcar-like services will enhance the market for more functional, less private-vehicle exclusive settlement patterns as he notes in a comment.
While we are at it let us also note that in functional Dooryards and Clusters, informal and formal individual-vehicle sharing has been going on since the autonomobile first appeared and existed for horses and bigger buggies before that.
“You are welcome to borrow the Expedition to pick up your family at the Airport.”
“We will be happy to pay for gas and insurance to use your Land Rover to go get a Christmas tree and we will bring you back one too.”
“Why don’t our four families pool our resources and get a “second car” that will serve all of us for special trips and in an emergency?”
As Jim points out higher cost per mile are a catalyst for such discussions.
One final note. The sort of take-home-and-plug-in shared vehicles that Larry suggests do exist. So do many other ways to reduce the area devoted to parking vehicles and making vehicles avaliable to those who need them just when they need them.
You have heard this before:
If the total cost of mobility and access was equitably shared these systems would be part of the America’s way of life and the American Dream instead of being fringe ideas for tree huggers.
Appologists for Business As Usual and those who want to profit from dysfunctional settlement patterns will continue to look for nits to pick.
EMR