Zipcar pulls up in downtown Palo Alto

What happened to all those share-a-bikes? Didn’t the transportation people claim that those fancy, expensive, bikes were going to solve everone’s problems, and save the planet too?

So now that the share-a-bike program has become “settled science”, we’re going to drop ten share-a-car cars on the scene too?

Why?

The bike share program was just a pilot to see if they could be successfully installed and maintained. There are far too few bikes and stations in Palo Alto for general purpose use. Hopefully, bike share will be expanded into the city’s neighborhoods at some point.

Hopefully car share will be deploying a large enough system to meet their demand.

My own feeling is that these Zipcars will only serve those who live within walking distance of one of the garages in which they are housed. Who else would benefit from a share car service on a regular basis?

For the rest of us who live and frequent downtown, we will not be using them. To use this service, someone would need to know in advance that they need a car to belong to the service and then be able to access it without the use of a car. I suppose that someone could arrive on a bike or on a train or even a bus to use the service, but that sounds unlikely.

The only people who would benefit would be those who live close and decide that they have no need of car ownership with this service on their doorstep for the few occasions they may need a car, like once a week grocery shopping or a trip to the coast.

Otherwise, who else will it serve? Or am I missing something?

I’d bet these cars are quite useful for out of town visitors who take a train from the airport to a downtown hotel, and only occasionally need a car.

An annual parking permit costs $466, not $6500. I don’t know if Zipcar pays for the spaces or not. I would think the idea would be that people could take the train or express bus to work but have access to a car for errands, lunch, etc. That’s pretty much the Zipcar model in downtown business districts.

I have been a zipcar user for many years. It’s a very convinient service specially for those who don’t need a car on a permanent basis. I use Zip car when I visit cities where I don’t need a car most of the time and in particular when I am in another town frequently. Zipcar leases spaces from the cities, doesn’t park for free and has given me consistent good service.You are not forced to use it if you don’t want it, but please hold the negativity, Maybe it’s not for you, but the world doesn’t revolve around you, did you notice?

I think Zipcar is a great service for those who use it and I know many young professionsals who do use it as an alternative to car ownership. I think it is something that will become more and more popular for certain demographics.

My problem (negatives) is twofold. One this was something that was sprung on Palo Alto residents with no notice. Why was all this hidden until a day or two before? Was any market research done to see if we had the right type of demographics near the car lots to make this a useful enterprise?

Secondly, and this is my main concern, we are now losing parking spaces to these cars. These dedicated parking spots will always be out of the pool for general parking. We already have confusing color coded permit holders only spots which can’t be used by the general public and whenever I go downtown I see all these vacant spaces which can’t be used by occasional parkers. Now there are going to be zipcar spaces, which whether they have a car parked in them or not, are no longer in the pool of available spaces for occasional parkers.

We are looking for solutions to parking downtown. At this stage, I can’t see how losing spaces will help with our parking solution.

@common sense Why can downtown residents buy a quarterly permit to park downtown?

I’ve only read a few comments, but to “More-craziness” inquiring as to why there needs to be this zipcar opportunity when there was the bike option…

When was the last time you hauled a large load of groceries home on a bike… and maybe in the pouring rain (I know, that’s a bit rare these days), but the fact is there are times when a short term car usage would be very useful.

My son is a great alternative commuter using bike, bus and train, but he’s signed up because there are times when a car would be a great fourth option… like for grocery shopping (he has his own place) or for a date.

I think it’s a great idea. I only skimmed the article, but hopefully the drop-off and pick up location(s) won’t be restricted to the downtown zone. It would be great to have one in midtown or south Palo Alto as well.

Common Sense @ Midtown brings up an good point – what is Zipcar paying for a 24 hour/day, 365 days/year parking space? Note that regular parking permits does not allow parking overnight, and a permit does not give the permit holder the right to a specific parking space. Those rights means that the value of the parking space should be more than the cost of a normal parking fee.

Also there was alot discussion about allowing homeless people to park overnight. Shouldn’t someone living out of their car be allowed to have the same opportunity to a parking space as a for-profit company like Zipcars? (note Zipcars is owned by Avis, a $7 billion market cap company).

I think that Zip cars is great idea and wish that there will be more locations to pick one up.
California Ave.? Hey, I will get rid of my car.

The City Manager & Mayor Shepard should not be committing city resources (parking spaces) to a $7 billion private company without the approval of the city council. Perhaps the city council would approve of this as the best use of land, or they might want to have considered opening up for solicitation to get the best value for the city, or perhaps they city council would have wanted to use the parking spaces to support vehicle dwellers.

Bad form of governance from the City Manager & Mayor Shepard.

> When was the last time you hauled a large load
> of groceries home on a bike.

It’s easily done with a child carrier—which holds groceries just as conveniently as a child.

> but the fact is there are times when a short term
> car usage would be very useful.

Your rain example only works if you live a very short distance from where a large supply of these cars are located. You’re not suggesting walking a mile in the rain to get to a zipcar are you? What about local buses? Most of these buses are empty most of the day.

The issue here is why is the City involved with this private company, which clearly can not supply thousands of zipcars for all of Palo Alto?

If the zipcar concept is viable—then it should be able to operate without any City help at all. Given the general failure of the rent-a-bike concept—adding ten more cars to the road doesn’t seem like an idea that is going to take thousands of cars off the roads.

(Oh—the claim that there weren’t enough bikes available to make the rent-a-bike program a success would seem to be offset by the fact these racks are rarely empty. If the program were that successful, then it would pay for itself, and more bikes could be bought. Bikes are not that expensive.)

One of the local papers should investigate what the quid-pro-quo from zipcar is for City help.

The pink mustaches are Lyft, similar to Uber, not rentals. Like taxis, they do not occupy valuable parking spots. And they also come with their own designated driver — I see plenty of Uber cars (blue U in the window) downtown on Friday and Saturday nights. The pink mustaches of last spring seem to have disappeared lately. Maybe Lyft is concentrating on other geographic markets. Zipcar is not suitable if you like a few glasses of wine with dinner.

I appreciate that the City is trying to explore options to reduce downtown commuter traffic. Now downtown workers can ride the train (or bike if they live close enough) to work but use a Zipcar if they need to drive to a meeting during the day. If 3 people use a single Zipcar at 3 different times during the day, that’s 2 fewer cars parked in the city lots, and it’s 3 fewer cars coming in/out a rush hour. Multiply that by as much as 10 and that starts to really add up. On top of that, residents who live near the downtown area could decide to keep one fewer family car on the streets since now they have easy access to a car-sharing service. This sounds worth a try to me! Once Zipcar sees the demand, hopefully this will expand to other parts of the city as well.

I’m no fan of City Hall and I don’t use Zipcar but I understand the benefits in mitigating parking/traffic congestion and encouraging use of public transit. I am also perfectly fine with the City subsidizing these spaces, as I recognize that not every use of public resources will necessarily accrue to my private benefit.

It has been often reported by different media that Zipcar has been running in the red for the last three years. Isn’t there a limit, set by the IRS, on how many years in a row a business can lose money? Does the IRS shut the business down forcibly, or simply refuse them anymore deductions?

@Purple Sage, regarding limits to running in the red, reminds me of a Charles Foster Kane quote:

“You’re right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in… 60 years.”