The recent IPO of Zipcar stock on April 13th (which I did not pounce on… one day I promise to use my TradeKing account… one day), got me thinking about the whole transportation sharing phenomenon. I like to count myself among the early adopters of Zipcar, having bought and used a membership while I lived in Boston, MA. It’s a great service, which I used countless times and solely relied upon for any car-related trip for a few years.
This is a Zipcar. Note the door sticker.
I believe that Zipcar’s way of business in Boston showed the company at its best. I lived in the part of Boston known as Allston, home to many interesting characters, who oft-frequented the colorful, cheap and delicious ethnic f00d eatery laced streets of Harvard Ave and Cambridge St. Surrounding this vortex of food, bars, 20-somethings and college kids attending BU or BC, are many nearly indistinguishable, but lovely in their own way, apartment buildings, which few and far between have accompanying parking lots. The lots require a person to shell out between $125 and $175 on average for the parking lot privilege, or resign oneself to either A) never leaving in your car past 5 pm or B) willing yourself to play find-a-spot for upwards of half an hour on a busy night.
In the midst of this, Zipcar still managed to buy between two and four spots in what seemed like half of these lots for its customers, paying God-knows-what for the forever rights to these choice urban slots. It might have been a gamble at first, but Zipcar was smart to wager that people would only buy a membership if they could walk a max of two blocks to a Zipcar. As a result, Zipcar became ubiquitous in Boston by 2009, thriving off a public that was young, poor and unwilling to pay more money to the handful of greedy landlords/sometime slumlords.
I am now a resident of Washington, DC. I have used Zipcar only once (when I needed a pickup truck) and have scarcely seen Zipcars on the road in four months of living here. I think I know why. DC is a city with far fewer colleges and universities, although it has it’s share – American, Georgetown, George Washington, and Catholic Universities among them, but far fewer than the scores of such institutions in Boston. That means a smaller customer base. Also of note – Metro Stations (DC) are far more spaced out here than the sometimes bi-blockly occurrence of T stops in Boston, making a car seem like more of a necessity for trips, and in turn making car-ownership a decent choice. Plus, more people here are willing to pay for parking spots because of the apparent car necessity – seeing as many people here are a product of the suburban car culture that has led to the DC area being second only to Los Angeles in terms of traffic. I myself am guilty, and currently have a leased Honda Civic that I have a paid spot for out back, mostly because I have family in Northern and Central VA who would be inaccessible otherwise. In spite of this however I sometimes wonder “how often am I really visiting family? Couldn’t someone pick me up from the Metro or a train station?”. But still. I have a car. The DC world is way less compact than the Boston world.
So Zipcar isn’t huge in DC. But there is one thing that people love here: bike sharing, in the form of the sole provider Capital Bikeshare. This is strongly evidenced by a much chronicled recent LivingSocial deal that offered a year’s membership for half price, leading to thousands jumping on board and causing many people to wonder if the system would be overburdened by users. The fact that this mini-panic occurred in spite of the fact that there are 110 stations with 1100+ bikes and counting shows that people in DC love biking so much that they can’t imagine the hell of commuting/getting around by any other means.
A Rack of Capital Bikeshare Bikes
I can understand the worry of my bikeshare brethren. I tried the whole take the Metro downtown then wait for the Circulator to take me to Georgetown commute. It usually took about 40 minutes each way, which for this area, might not seem that bad. Sometimes, to save money, I even tried the Circulator to Metro bus combo for the commute home… but although the Circulator is consistent, Metro bus timing is very inconsistent, leading me to give up and hoof it to a Metro station on more than one occasion. But since I started using Capital Bikeshare bikes this past week, I’ve consistently cut my commute time in half, to 20 minutes each way. Not only that but I’m saving mad scrilla ($). My discounted membership to Capital Bikeshare cost what half a month of using the Metro/Circulator combo costs me.
Besides the whole super important time/money factor and the obvious exercise factor, I can see why Bikesharing is popular here in DC, and that is most of all because of the greater bike culture. There is just a large volume of people of all sorts on their various bikes, from the commuter crowd on their shared bikes, to the hardcore commuters and hipsters pumping on their road bikes aggressively in the city core, t0 the serious spandex clad bikers racing down Rock Creek Parkway paths. Although non-Bikeshare bikers might bemoan the presence of so many noobish bikers on their heavy ass two-wheelers, who don’t obey the rules of the road as much and go way slower, in the long run it will hopefully lead to more advocacy for road/trail space for cyclists. Biking really should be king in DC anyway… why else would there be so many bike shops?
So we know why Zipcar is big in Boston but not DC, which is bigger on bikesharing. But why is bikesharing not big/in existence in Boston? Well, that’s all about to change with the advent of Hubway, a new bikesharing program announced just a week ago. In summary, there will be 600 bikes at 61 stations come July in Boston, with hopes to expand to a total of 5,000 bikes at 300 stations. This is a good sign, but I have to wonder what took Boston so long, since it’s often called the most European of US Cities. Nevertheless, I think Hubway will thrive. Bike paths and lanes are in much greater abundance in Boston than in DC – notably the path along Sturrow Drive/the Esplanade by the Charles River and the Commonwealth Avenue bike lane that stretches from Allston to Fenway, aptly painted in an easy-to-see Fenway green, which mostly services BU students.
Bike lanes are nearly non-existent in DC and I’m not sure if that’s going to change. Some roads, such as Connecticut Ave, simply have no way of accommodating bikes, with its lane structures that change depending on the time of day and day of the week. And yet, Capital Bikeshare is thriving, for the reasons noted earlier. So I can only expect good things from Hubway, and Boston will be a model for vehicle sharing of all sorts. And despite everything I said about Zipcar not being huge in DC, they do pay for gas on your trips, so that could eventually be reason enough for people to abandon car leasing/ownership, what with gas prices jumping about 20 cents per gallon each month it seems. (Shudder. Thinking about energy costs makes me flash back to watching the documentary Collapse.)
In the meantime, I can only wait for the Capital Bikeshare IPO…
