Clearing the Roads

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For Fran Trowbridge, 72, a retiree, the answer was easy. Two Flexcars are stationed in the garage of a Seattle high-rise next to hers. A month after joining Flexcar, she sold her Ford Taurus. Insurance had cost her more than she pays for 10 hours of monthly car-share fees, which is all she needs to shop and visit friends. "And I sure don't miss the maintenance and lubing part," she says. Similarly, for the Steelquists--a two-job, two-kid, two-car family--price was a motive. "We wanted to dial back on expenses and also reduce our impact on the environment," says Joan Steelquist, who works for a Seattle nonprofit group. After enrolling in the city's One Car Challenge last summer, the Steelquists downsized to a single 1989 Chevy Geo. Joan uses Flexcars to get to her part-time teaching job once a week. And she can drive her son Reuben, 11, to Boy Scout meetings on Thursday nights--and grocery-shop while she's at it--while her husband is off somewhere else with the Geo. Moreover, she adds, "sharing cars with others gives me the good feeling of being part of a community."

Worldwide, 280,000 people belong to car-share programs, nearly three-quarters of them in Europe, according to Susan Shaheen, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. The idea spread to the U.S. in 1998, with the opening of a small company in Portland, Ore. Since then, the movement has grown to 14 firms with 62,000 members in 14 states and the District of Columbia. The firms range from ambitious outfits like Zipcar and Flexcar, which are each adding as many as 1,000 members a month, to modest start-ups like the Dancing Rabbit Vehicle Co-operative in Rutledge, Mo., and Roaring Fork Vehicles in Aspen, Colo. Zipcar and Flexcar, zealous rivals, both say they will break even for the first time next month, even while they are preparing to expand into new markets from Chicago to Denver and Minneapolis. Across the U.S., car-sharing membership and revenues are expected to grow tenfold over the next five years. Says Shaheen: "A lot of innovative people are passionate about car sharing--because it makes sense."

Among the enthusiasts are transit officials desperately seeking to boost ridership on buses and trains. Car sharing is not designed for traveling from home to work and back--the cost would be too high for a 10-hour day. But, stationed near office buildings and along rail lines, shared cars offer "mobility insurance" for workers who avoid mass transit because they just might need a car for a midday errand. The message: If you must own a car, leave it in your garage at home. Washington Metro officials have placed 107 Flexcars and Zipcars at 66 city and suburban stations. And downtown Seattle has 35 Flexcars so that members can scoot across town for lunch or a parent-teacher meeting. "Car sharing is not a silver bullet," says Ref Lindmark, a transportation planner for King County, Wash. "But it gives people another reason to ride the bus." And, he adds, it is a lot cheaper than building million-dollar parking lots and billion-dollar highways.