Publication Date: Friday, March 19, 2004
Unable to share
Unable to share
(March 19, 2004) Once heralded car-sharing no longer in Palo Alto
by Bill D'Agostino
Car-sharing, a recent innovation heralded as a new way to alleviate clogged streets, has all but disappeared in Palo Alto.
Two companies that offered the service -- Flexcar and City CarShare -- have quietly pulled their cars out of Palo Alto within the past year.
In summer 2002, Flexcar took over for a Caltrain research project that launched a year earlier. CarShare also began offering memberships in the summer of 2002.
At one point, there were various locations throughout the city where members paying monthly dues and hourly/per mileage rates could pick up shared vehicles, mostly Honda Civics.
The dream was that people would commute to the city using alternative modes of transportation and then use the cars for other trips.
Reasons given for the local shelving of the program include the city's lack of population density and residents' affluence. Both companies insist they will return to Palo Alto, but neither have plans to do so immediately.
"Palo Alto as a city center simply doesn't have the density we need to make car-sharing effective," said Lance Ayrault, the president and CEO of Flexcar, which moved out one year ago.
Seattle, where the for-profit Flexcar has been more successful, has approximately 10,000 customers. Palo Alto's population is only around 60,000 people, although 120,000 employees crowd inside during the day.
Another problem, Ayrault said, was that many Palo Altans earn too much.
"Once you start getting people making a lot of money they've got their car and they're not going to get out of it," he said.
The nonprofit City CarShare had its last car located at a "pod" near Homer Avenue, a few blocks from the downtown train station. However, when the city converted the parking spot for use by a construction company, the company had to move.
Although it had briefly considered moving to downtown's Caltrain station, it didn't get the go-ahead from Caltrain soon enough -- so the company moved to the Stanford campus, where it has been more successful.
"I don't want to blame the city for that, because I can't say for sure that we would have been able to keep the car there anyway," said Jon Weiner, City CarShare's Peninsula coordinator. (Weiner is also a contributor to the Mountain View Voice, the Weekly's sister paper.)
City CarShare hopes to find a spot at Caltrain's station when it returns to Palo Alto, but no timetable has been set for the homecoming.
Councilwoman Yoriko Kishimoto was a subscriber to City CarShare, hoping it would be one of the ways her three-driver household would continue to need only one car.
But, Kishimoto warned, "I'm going to stop my membership soon if they don't find a spot downtown."
City CarShare is also considering leaving Mountain View, where it has been for one year, due to lack of interest.
One City CarShare vehicle had been located at the Foundation for Global Community, near downtown Palo Alto.
Councilman Jim Burch, who is a trustee with the group, said that one reason why there wasn't enough interest in the service was that employees were already engaging in a less formal and more cost-effective version of the service: they were borrowing each other's cars.
Bill D'Agostino can be e-mailed at bdagostino@paweekly.com
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