New Haven Independent

Over 1,400 New Haveners now pay a membership fee to rent Zipcars cheap for quick trips when they need them. It’s part of a strategy to enable people to avoid owning cars. That boosts public transportation, declogs street traffic, cleans the air, and combats global warming.

Zipcar member Nick Caruso had reserved a red Prius for Thursday afternoon, but he got a blue Element instead. That’s because the previous user had reported a possible problem with the Prius. Before you could say, “Zipcar,” employee Paul Hammer (pictured) arrived to take the car in for servicing. He loads his bike into the car, so after he drops it off he can bike to the next car that needs to be serviced.

And it’s catching on.

Though he didn’t get his car of choice this time, Caruso is generally a happy Zipcar member. He proves Yale’s sustainable transportation director Holly Parker’s point that increased access to Zipcars in New Haven “tips the scales” in favor of living car-free.

Caruso (pictured in the Element) is a student at Yale’s School of Architecture. He did the math to figure out that he’s better off renting a car when he needs it, getting around by bike the rest of the time, and taking the Metro North train into New York. He said his car is in storage right now, and he’s planning to sell it.

“Doing some number crunching,” he said, “when you add up property tax, insurance, and car payments on my own car, it’s more economical to use Zipcar.”

That’s especially true for Yale-affiliated Zipcar members, because they pay an annual membership of just $35 (and get the first year’s payment back with free rentals). Hourly rates vary a little based on the type of car (several hybrids are among the options) but are around $8 an hour during the week and $9 on weekends. Those rates include gas, insurance and maintenance. Members who aren’t affiliated with Zipcar’s university program (which is also available at three other Connecticut institutions of higher learning — Trinity, Connecticut College and Post University) pay an annual fee of $50 to $60.

Parker said that as of the end of May, New Haven has 1,401 Zipcar members, and that average utilization rate in May for all the cars was 56 percent, a number she said is definitely within the Seattle-based corporate office’s ballpark of expectations. (A spokesman for the company’s public relations firm said it does not provide utilization figures to the public, but he added that the 16 cars in Yale’s fleet comprise “one of the larger campus footprints.”

Anyone can rent the Yale-related cars, the number of which just increased to 16 vehicles from 14. But since they all must be picked up and returned to parking lots around campus, that isn’t convenient for all potential users.

Enter New Haven’s transportation czar, Mike Piscitelli.

“We’ve been trying to find places to park cars not in central campus,” he said. “There are already enough non-Yale people using the service; we’d like to add a few more cars and spread them around the community.”

Piscitelli said he’s not sure about locations yet, but wants to focus where there are already a number of Zipcar members. “We’ll know more in the next couple of months,” he added.

Parker is ebullient about Zipcars. “Between having two train stations [Union Station and State Street], CT Transit, the Yale Shuttle, the VA shuttle, the Yale New Haven Hospital shuttle, plus New Haven becoming a more bicycle-friendly city, I think Zipcar is what tips the scales in enabling people to live car-free in New Haven. It’s the last answer to all the arguments that people feel they need a car — like grocery shopping is a perfect use for it. What would it cost to pay for a taxi?” she wondered aloud. Not to mention the hassle.

She said one of the beauties of Zipcar is that using the system is so intuitive. “If you reserve it for an hour, and there’s no reservation right after you, you can call the toll-free Zipcar number and extend it for a half hour or an hour — which is great if you get stuck in traffic or your errands are taking longer than expected. It takes 30 seconds.”

Parker added that the new iPhone has a Zipcar application. “It shows where you are and where the nearest Zipcar locations are. The locations where cars are available show up as a green dot, the others as a red dot. It includes a horn icon, and when you hit it, it beeps so you can find the right car.”

The company’s website promotes its simple four-step process: “join, reserve, unlock, drive.” The way it’s supposed to work, a member can’t unlock the car until his or her reservation time. So Nick Caruso was a little miffed when he was able to unlock it a few minutes early and was charged an extra half hour. (He wrote in an email the next day, “Zipcar did not charge me for the half hour before 1:30 after I explained the situation. They’re done their homework when it comes to customer satisfaction, so I give them high marks all around. They’ve made car sharing plausible in the US, and I support them 100%.”)

The company aims to get a million cars off America’s roads, cleaning up the air and reducing global warming emissions, as more people sign up for car-sharing the Zipcar way.