I don’t know many people who would opt to be carless in Northampton. As one friend so eloquently put it upon my move back to Northampton from acceptable-to-be-carless San Francisco, “You aren’t gonna buy a car? I’d kill myself if I didn’t have a car in this town!”
OK, I’ll admit it: three carless months later it almost reached that point for my girlfriend and me. Already in the cab we had called to take us to a friend’s party in Amherst, we asked how much the fare would be. The driver radioed the question to his dispatcher. “I’m sorry,” I said, “the radio crackled in such a way that it sounded like he said $24.”
“Twenty-four,” the driver confirmed.
“Is that round-trip?”
It was time to find some wheels. About to go through the rigmarole of buying a relocating friend’s car (on its rusty last legs), paying into an insurance policy (expensive with my driving record), validating my girlfriend’s expired California driver’s license (as aforementioned driving record has resulted in my not driving) and finding a place to park, we were saved at the last minute by a Zipcar-driving co-worker who let us in on the secret.
The Happy Valley’s Zipcar inventory lives in Smith and Amherst colleges’ campus lots, easily accessible on foot from both downtowns. If you’re over 21 with a driver’s license and a clean driving record, a $25 application fee and a $50 annual fee (bumped down to $35 for Amherst and Smith students, faculty and staff) are all you’ll need to embark on the glorious highway of transportation freedom that is a Zipcar membership. Once you’re a Zipcard-carrying Zipster, renting from any of the hundreds of Zipcar locations in the world will cost you $8 per hour or $66 per day with gas (you pay at the pump with Zipcar’s credit card in the car’s visor), insurance (with a waiveable-for-a-fee $500 deductible) and 180 free driving miles included. If your reservation exceeds 24 hours, they’ll tack on an extra 20 free miles for every additional hour.
‘Eighties babies raised on a diet of texting, email and other faceless communication methods will love that all you need to reserve and drive your car are your Zipcard and Internet. Reserve your car online or, better yet, download the Zipcar iPhone App, which not only lets you locate and reserve available Zipcars, but also allows you to lock/unlock the car and report damages, and alerts you via text message when your reservation time is nearing, almost over (helping you avoid the hefty $50 late fee), or extendable (which you can opt for, free of charge, at the touch of a button).
Though an iPhone is the perfect Zipcar accessory, text alerts come to any cell phone and reservations are easily managed online. When it’s time to drive, simply walk to Zipcar’s designated parking spots and wave your Zipcard over the windshield card reader, which correctly identifies your reservation with radio frequency technology and unlocks the vehicle (the keys are in the glove box).
The first thing we needed to do with our Zipcar membership was move. Though Zipcar’s advertising is witty and well written (who gets the awesome job of naming all the Zipcars?), we felt a little misled when we found that only certain cars are available in this area—Priuses, Civics and Scions. Though you won’t find a handy pickup truck or date-impressing BMW in the Valley, “Dold” the Scion was spacious enough for us to move most of our boxes in under three hours (with some help from Dad’s pickup) and still go grocery shopping with a much lower fee than a U-Haul totes.
Next up? A day in Boston. Sure, we had to pay a bit for parking, but up against $45 each for round-trip bus tickets to the city, the $66 per day for the Zipcar combined with the freedom of your own wheels and your own music, the flexibility and the comfort (no tiny bus seats next to strange strangers, no time-guzzling detours), Zipcar easily won this battle. Though we did get snagged on the 45 cents per extra mile we drove over our allotted 180 free miles, the total of $45 we each paid was well worth it.
Zipcar has been especially handy for short summer adventures like visiting swimming holes, movie-going and mini-golfing. However, when it comes time for that week-long beach vacation, “Patrina” the Prius won’t do you much good. This is my biggest complaint with Zipcar: not only is your reservation capped at four days, but you cannot drop off your Zipcar at another Zipcar location. Once that car is reserved, it’s costing you $66 a day all the way until it’s parked back in its particular spot.
If you’re the type that needs a car for weekend getaways, Zipcar may not be for you. Other possible deal-breakers? Only Zipcar members can drive a Zipcar. It’s $25 extra per year to add another person to your Zipcar account, though someone with a different Zipcar account can drive your Zipcar. No smoking or pets (unless in carriers) are allowed, and you’ll need to BYO baby car seat and bike rack. However, with advance notice, Zipcar can outfit its cars with push/pull hand controls for those requiring alternative driving means. Finally, sharing is definitely caring with Zipcar because when you split the yearly fee and driving costs, that $66 a day comes down to a wallet-friendly $33 a day, less than a round-trip cab ride to Amherst.
Number-crunching aside, Zipcar’s mission is reason enough to sign up. The bottom line isn’t about getting you to the grocery store quicker than PVTA; it’s that car sharing versus car owning means minimizing your consumption and removing yourself from the gradual fumigation of the planet through the gas guzzling and exhaust emitting that is our transportation system. Not only does Zipcar enlist the greenest of the green in its car fleet, it also works with urban transit planners to make car sharing widely available, so even though we can’t afford to buy a hybrid car, with Zipcar, we can drive one.
Finally, there are no better last words than Zipcar’s own mission statement: “We have a team that is dedicated, members who are loyal, and a world that is poised for change. It’s lofty, but we’re not stopping until a whole generation asks, ‘Congestion…? You mean allergies?’ Yup, we think it will go that far.” And I’ll be driving a Zipcar when it does.
