Clearing the Roads

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Increasingly, businesses are seeing car sharing as a way to cut costs on their fleets: Corporate accounts now make up at least 40% of Flexcar and Zipcar revenues. Some companies even offer access as a perk to employees by allowing use of the cars for personal errands--much as they might subsidize a gym membership. In downtown San Diego, 14 corporations share a fleet of 10 Flexcars, thus reducing their need to buy company cars. In Seattle, URS Corp., an engineering firm, sold five of its nine fleet cars after signing up with Flexcar, saving $12,000 a year in parking fees alone. And in Manhattan, Elan Ackerman, who runs a small events-marketing firm, uses Zipcars to pick up disc jockeys at the airport ("They like to be pampered") and deliver cases of Tiger Beer, his main client. His car-sharing bill amounts to $150 a month for both personal and business errands. "It's become essential," he says. "Parking alone in Manhattan would cost me $400 a month."

So far, sharing cars works best in dense city neighborhoods, where people can easily walk to them. Last year Flexcar had to scale back temporarily in Los Angeles, after scattering its 30 vehicles too widely among the city's vast low-rise neighborhoods. Eventually, if car sharing makes inroads in the suburbs, it would probably be in urbanized pockets, where office complexes and subdivisions would see it as an extra amenity. Wellesley College, in the Boston suburbs, makes Zipcars available to all its students, and a score of other universities have also partnered with car-sharing groups. In the end, however, convenience is fundamental. Even Berkeley-based Shaheen, the acknowledged guru of car sharing, isn't a member of the Bay Area's City CarShare because, so far, none of the company's 85 vehicles are close to her home. "They'd have to put one at the bottom of my hill," she says.

And then there is another small matter: Will animal lovers give up their SUVs when they discover that car-share companies require Fido to be kept in a pet carrier? "Leave the car cleaner than you found it--no hair, no pee, no odors, no quills or feathers or yolks," warn Zipcar's rules. In Seattle, the Steelquists are grappling with the issue, as their Australian shepherd, Loki, takes a dim view of confinement. "Maybe someday they'll have dog-friendly cars," says Joan, wistfully.