Time Sharing Cars

timmy_walker writes "This article from the associated press talks about new car time share services from ZipCar and Seattle-based Flexcar, where "Customers make reservations via computer or telephone, and the company uses remote-access systems to control who can use the car when.""

nice but

[spac3manspiff]

Public transportation is more convenient and cheaper.

Meh

[t_allardyce]

People have cars for privacy - its your own little home on wheels you can take anywhere, this is just a gloryfied rental car? Just get the bus...

Re:nice but

[Anonymous Coward]

Public transportation is more convenient and cheaper.

I'd say "convenient" can be defined several different ways. For instance, is it more convenient for me to spend half of my travel time waiting for buses and trains on a Sunday, or would I rather spend the 9 bucks an hour and rent one of these things and actually spend my time getting around and doing what I need to do? It's also certainly more convenient if I need to make a trip to Home Depot to grab a bunch of crap...

Re:nice but

[blincoln]

Public transportation is more convenient and cheaper.

Yes, it's certainly more convenient to take groceries, home electronics, etc. etc. home on the bus.

It's certainly more convenient to try and get home from a club on the bus only to realize that they stopped running at 11:30PM because your city is too poor to run them any later.

It's certainly more convenient to wait half an hour (or more) in the rain, because the last one came by five minutes early.

Public transportation is shit. I've had to deal with it for the last ten years in two cities. It's filthy, it's slow, I can't take anything substantial on it, and it doesn't go where I need to. I bought a car eight months ago, and it's been great. I can get places in ten minutes that used to take me an hour or more each way on the bus. I can go buy things at stores instead of mail-ordering them. On Monday I get a parking pass for my building at work, and then I can finally ditch the last vestiges of my reliance on public transportation and not have to worry about being half an hour late if I get out the door a minute later than I planned.

Time-sharing a car seems like an ideal plan for someone who wants that level of convenience but not the pricetag that comes along with actually owning one.

Re:Right......

[KillerDeathRobot]

Except that when your cheap used car sits there not being used, you're still paying for insurance, and possibly parking. On top of that you have to try to find the cheapest gas station you can when you drive your own car, while the flexcar or zipcar price is flat and includes gas. And don't forget how much maintenance adds to the cost of a "cheap" used car.

Re:nice but

[Atrax]

> Public transportation is so ridiculously less convenient than a car that I can't believe anyone would say otherwise except in jest.

> And it's only cheaper if your time isn't worth anything.

you could always use your time on public transport productively. Got a laptop? Read Books? listen to talking books, even?

You can get some decent research time on a middle-to-long bus ride. Try reading a study guide while driving and see where that gets you.

Re:nice but

[Feanturi]

Cheaper, yes, but how is it more convenient? I guess it depends on how good your public transport is. My job involves a shift that begins at 6am. The very earliest I can get there by bus is 6:20, and that is of course just to somewhere down the street from the building, it'll be a bit later than that before I can actually report in and be ready for work. And that's even optimistic because they cannot guarantee that the second bus I have to transfer to will not have come and gone early, or that my first bus will not be a couple minutes late, leaving me to wait another 15 minutes while still only half-way there.

Under better conditions, like not having to work until 8, one can plan against such schedule problems caused by traffic and plan to be there half an hour early every day. Great, but the trip is still taking three times as long as it would by car, and I have better things to do. Picking up something on the way home from work is a chore, as you've got to have it planned out for each place you might want to visit along the way, are limited in what you can lug around, and are basically a slave to their schedules. With my car (which I will admit is the main reason I have to keep a careful budget) I can move about freely, whenever I want to, never waiting in the cold, for it never leaves without me. I'm also one of those people that finds driving relaxing, even city driving. I'm very low-risk for road-rage, driving's just fun. :) Anyhow, it's way more convenient than the bus, at least where I live, and it is well-worth the money to me. Missing the bus, waiting in the cold, having to leave evening events earlier than others, these things stress me out and make me unhappy. It turns out that money really can buy happiness, in some forms.

Re:Doesn't cost $40,000

[bfizzle]

Chances are the damn Toyota won't break down either. Mine had over 200k miles on it before someone rear ended it and the only part I had to replace was a batery and a few mufflers (ya for lifetime warrenties).

Even new cars aren't $40k. You can even pickup new cars for around $12k if you want something a little more reliable or fancier.

Re:nice but

[drinkypoo]

Cheaper yes, more convenient no. When I lived in SF I could drive for 5-10 minutes to work, spend 0-5 minutes finding parking within a couple blocks, and be done. Taking public transport to work required two buses and the muni train and took 30 to 60 minutes. As a network admin, I found this to be highly impractical, but it would be plenty bad for other people too. Mind you, SF has one of the best public transportation systems in the US, so basically I am calling bullshit. Let's not even get into stuff like going shopping for a family, or making a trip to the ER without paying a grand or more for an ambulance ride. These are things simply not reasonable to do with public transportation (except that a cab might get to you faster and be cheaper than an ambulance...)

More Thoughts on Cars and Society

[NardofDoom]

I once heard a news story where a Chinese government official said that having a car in every garage is the sign of an advanced society.

"That doesn't make any sense, " I thought. "If a society is advanced, a person shouldn't need a car to get around. It should be a luxury purchase."

An advanced society is able to have effective, efficient, and cheap public transportation. The fact that we rely on cars to move people around shows how far we have to go towards an advanced society, not just a rich one.

I would love to give up my car. I'm looking at houses within walking or biking distance of my job, so that I can lose the cost. But right now I have to drive 40 miles to and from work each day. Not because I want to, but because a long time ago a war hero who got elected president decided to cut rail funding in favor of building 30 meter wide swaths of concrete across the countryside. And then wasting my tax dollars on maintaining them.

I just dropped $55 on an inspection and emissions test because I need to drive to and from work. That's $55 I can't spend on a new hard drive or computer. I spend $40 a week (A WEEK!) on gas because there's no way I can commute.

I can't imagine how difficult it would be if I were someone on a limited income trying to hold down a job without a car. Public transportation doesn't go into the suburbs, where the money and jobs are, so I'd be confined to one small area for everything, or paying out the ass for taxis to haul me to and from work.

Things have got to change.

Re:Getting lucky

[NardofDoom]

First, this is slashdot. There's no chance of anyone here getting "lucky" unless you mean using "I'm feeling lucky" on Google.

Second, if a woman doesn't like me because I don't drive a nice car, she's a shallow, high-maintainence bitch who isn't worth my time, no matter how hot she is.

Re:Getting lucky

[Jeremi]

Let me paint 2 scenarios. Both involve a first date with a beautiful woman. In the first, you roll up in a rinky dink little shared car. In the second, you roll up in something slick that you own. Which scenario offers a better chance of getting lucky?

Neither, because for $2/hour extra you can roll up in a "premium" shared car, which is presumably less rinky-dink. And in any case, if your relationships are so infantile that your dates are decide whether or not to sleep with you based on your car, then I suggest saving your car/date money and spending it on hookers instead -- it'll cost about the same, and you'll be guaranteed to "get lucky".

Re:Dent-and-scratch

[zipwow]

If you can stand to get sweaty, that is...

Or rained-on, or frozen, or snowed-on. And can shower/warm up/treat frostbite at work.

Bikes are nice, but they're not an ultimate solution in most of the country. Think Minneapolis. Think Denver. Hell, it's cold enough in Seattle that only the hard-core greens bike year round. Even then it only works if you have shower facilities at work.

-Zipwow

Commute by bike...

[markw365]

I live 18.6 miles from work via bike. It takes me about an hour to ride in, or if I want, I can take the trolley which takes about the same amount of time. On a good day it will take 30 minutes to drive, but on most days I'm looking at being parked on I8, I94, or SR52 for around 45 minutes. Oh, this includes a 10 minute walk to the parking lot to get to my car vs my bike locker right outside the door of the building. So basically, I'm spending an extra 30 minutes each way getting a workout, or reading on the Trolley. It's quite a bit cheaper and better for my health.

Re:Dent-and-scratch

[Kiryat Malachi]

All of this is true.

All of this doesn't matter for a shared car service; cosmetic condition is (relatively) unimportant, so long as the car service is maintaining the car properly.

Dings are totally unimportant - scratches more so, since they do provide a vector for rust to attack the metal.