August 5, 2025 • 24 mins
We explore how car-sharing services like Zipcar are changing urban mobility patterns and helping people reduce or eliminate personal car ownership while maintaining flexibility for special trips.
• Car sharing complements public transit with each shared vehicle taking up to 13 privately owned cars off the street
• 83% of Zipcar members don't own cars, and 27% sell their cars within a year of joining
• 63% of car-sharing members are regular transit riders who use cars for occasional needs
• Most common uses: errands (49%), grocery shopping (47%), leaving the city (41%)
• Car sharing fills the gaps in transit systems for bulky purchases, multiple errands, and time-sensitive appointments
• The service differs from ride-hailing by allowing users to keep items in the car between stops
• Car ownership typically costs $500+ monthly, making car sharing a cost-effective alternative
• Car sharing reduces parking demand and helps create more space-efficient cities
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Doors are closing Public transit.
That's my way to roll On themetro.
I'm taking control.
Bus stops, train tracks it's mydaily grind.
Transit, it's the rhythm of mylife.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Can sharing cars help reduce traffic, cut emissions
and even boost public transit.
Today, we're exploring how carsharing services like Zipcar are
changing the way we think aboutowning and using cars.
All of this and more on TransitTangents.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Hey everybody, and welcome to this episode of
Transit Tangents.
My name is Lewis and I'm Chris,and today we are testing out
our kind of first remote setuphere, and we'll be doing an
episode talking about theimportance of car sharing to
help reduce car ownership.
The reason that we're doingthis remotely, though, is I have
officially made it to my newapartment in Germany.
(00:55):
We talked about this on thechannel several weeks ago,
months ago at this point.
It's been a long journey to gethere, but I'm sitting on one of
the only pieces of furniturethat I own at this point, which
is actually part of what spurredthe idea for this topic, which
is fairly non-conventional for achannel like ours, so focused
(01:16):
on public transit.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah well, we're transit tangents for a reason,
so we can go off on all kinds ofdifferent tangents, and this is
still supporting the overallgoal of increasing public
transportation.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Totally yeah, and the concept here too is, you know,
going car free, especially inthe United States, is difficult
in a lot of cases, and you knowa lot of people like Jerry and I
were car light, I would say, inAustin.
We had one car between the twoof us.
We both used our e-bikes to getaround a good chunk of the time
, but in some cases there aretrips that you can't do on an
(01:51):
e-bike, that are really hard todo on a bus or a train for that
matter, and that's kind of wherecar sharing kind of enters the
equation.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
This is something that you've probably seen in
your hometown or you've seenwhen you're out traveling.
There's a couple of differentcompanies that have existed out
there that have really tried tobring this car sharing to the
masses.
Lewis, what are you seeing inGermany?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah.
So it's kind of the idea forthis episode is I've been trying
to kind of get my apartmentfurnished and I've been seeing a
company local here in my regioncalled Tile Auto that has, you
know, kind of essentially asystem set up almost like think
of it like dockable bikes,except instead of actual docks
(02:42):
it's just like parking spotsthat are specific to their
rental car service.
But in the US we see thiseverywhere, with Zipcar as the
kind of most prominent system.
Zipcar has been around since2000.
They operate across most of theUnited States but also around
the world, and they're kind ofset up as a membership model.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah.
So, for an example, you couldlive in a city like Boston where
, if you wanted to join Zipcar,there would be a membership fee
of like $9 per month, and thenyou have access to a fleet of
these Zipcars all over the citywhere you can rent them starting
at about $14 an hour or about$100 per day.
And that also includes thingslike the cost of gas, which is
(03:25):
crazy to me that it alsoincludes the cost of gas,
although there are probably somecertain mileage thresholds that
you can't exceed for that gasto count.
But still, really, really coolsetup.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, and those thresholds do exist.
But, like when you compare thisto the cost of, like, renting a
car at your normal car rentalagency or something like that,
this is really cheap, especiallyif it is like, oh, I need to go
pick up this one specific thingat a store, I need to move this
piece of furniture to myfriend's house or whatever it
may be, where you only need thecar for one or two hours.
You know, renting a car for twohours in this example would be
(04:00):
28 bucks, versus going to rent acar from Enterprise or Hertz or
whatever it may be is probablygoing to cost you like a hundred
bucks at least.
And then you have to pay forgas and you have to worry about
insurance and all this otherstuff all stacked on top of it.
So definitely pretty convenient.
And Zipcar has kind of puttogether this pretty cool page
on their website that gives yousome statistics about their
(04:24):
users website that gives yousome statistics about their
users as well as a link to apaper by the Journal of
Transportation Research Boardthat actually cites that one
Zipcar takes up to 13 personallyowned cars off the street.
So in areas like Boston or NewYork where these Zipcars are
prevalent.
A lot of people are signing up.
Taking upwards of 13 personallyowned cars off the street is
pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, that's really impressive, especially
considering how many cars thatthey probably have deployed in
each of these cities.
Some other cool stats that theyprovided and info about the
Zipcar users 83% of the Zipcarmembers actually don't own a car
at all, which is also crazy tome but 83 are using the system
(05:06):
and they don't own a car.
Uh, 27 of members actuallyditch their cars within the
first year of joining zip caryeah, that's.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
That is like super positive to me, like the first
one.
I think like 83 of car membersnot owning a car makes some
sense, because if you own a caryou're probably not going to be
renting it that much.
But 27 of people who sign upfor a membership selling their
car within a year is huge.
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, absolutely.
That's huge and such a coolstat that they can collect.
But it shows the impact thatservices like this would have in
your cities 49% of people whoare Zipcar members postponed
either buying or leasing a newvehicle.
Because why do you need to buyor lease a new vehicle if you
have access to one on yourstreet already?
And 50 percent of single carhouseholds and 50 percent of
(05:53):
multi-car households wouldpurchase an additional vehicle
if they couldn't access Zipcar.
So now you have these families,these households that probably
would be in the market to buy acar anyway, but with the
availability of these zip cars,they don't really need to.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah, all of those stats are super encouraging to
see, and earlier on in theepisode too, you were saying
it's weird that we'd be talkingabout this, considering we talk
so heavily about public transit.
But really I do see car sharingas something that is very
public transit adjacent and cancompliment folks who compliment
the way folks get around, whoare public transit users.
(06:31):
So when you look at folks whouse Zipcar, 63% of members
frequently use publictransportation.
So 63% of people who are usingZipcar and are members use
public transportation to getaround.
Nearly half of them ridetransit more than five times per
week.
So these are folks who areevery single day commuting to
and from work or whatever it maybe.
(06:52):
They are frequent transit userswho are the vast majority of
people using Zipcar.
And another fun fact here is 82%of the members actually walk to
pick up their Zipcar, andthat's because the way that
their model is set up and thisis similar to how the model of
the one that I've mentioned here, tile Auto, where I live in
Yena is that they just have likeone or two parking spots spread
(07:14):
out across all differentneighborhoods.
It's not like you go to thisone giant parking lot somewhere
that's got 100 zip cars in it.
It's small, know smalllocalized, like I said at the
beginning, kind of similar to asetup of like a dockable bike
system where you've got you knowlittle nodes all over the city
where you can go um and it makesit so that you could walk to go
pick up the zip car so I kindof think of it as, uh, the micro
(07:37):
mobility that we already havewith the scooters, except
obviously larger, but thisactually predates the microility
movement with all the scootersand small personal devices on
the street, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
So why would somebody who typically uses public
transit have to use a Zipcarhere and there or throughout
their week?
Zipcar has a couple of stats,that really sort of detail why
people are using this service.
49% of the Zipcar trips arepeople just running errands, and
these are errands that do notinclude their things like
(08:10):
grocery shopping.
These are errands.
Maybe it's going to the doctoror going to places in the city
that aren't easily accessible bypublic transit.
Or it could be like yourexample, louis, of having to
furnish a new apartment and notwanting to take a giant couch on
the bus.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, totally, and I can even think of like going to
places like a Home Depot youwant to buy you know you're
working on a project in yourbackyard a garden center, buying
a new grill or whatever it maybe, picking up and dropping
things off at your friend'shouse if you need to, you know
need to borrow a cooler orwhatever it may be.
Um, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Uh, after errands, the next I was going to say all
of us probably have this mentalimage of seeing people in New
York city on the subway carryinglike tables across town, and
probably anybody who's listeningto those who lives in New York
city has had an experience wherethey're trying to like pick up
things and move them across townusing public transit.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
so if you have one of those experiences, we'd love to
actually have you comment andtalk about it I just watched the
tiktok, like yesterday, ofthese two guys carrying a couch
through the subway, but the waythey were doing it, like the
couch was just like rubbing upagainst the ground and I was
just like I don't know if I'dwant to sit on that couch after
it made that journey.
I don't know, but after errandsat 49% you also 47% of users do
(09:30):
use the Zipcar to go to thegrocery store Makes a lot of
sense.
You know, oftentimes you'regoing to the grocery store
shopping for like the entireweek.
It's not like you're going infor one or two items, and you
know, if you don't own a car,you're probably not necessarily
shopping like that.
You're probably having to dolike lots of small trips
carrying things.
So to be able to knock out allyour groceries especially if you
(09:53):
can rent a car, for, you know,a pretty affordable amount to
limit those trips, it can behelpful, although I would say,
though, that I think, like youknow, having more small grocery
stores around can kind of helpalleviate some of that, which I
know is something that a lot ofcities in the United States are
trying to work on, and I thinkthat that's probably the better
solution than making it so that,oh, I'll just rent a car to go
(10:13):
do this every time.
But it makes a lot of sensethat that is another high usage
point.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Kind of like the bodega culture in New York.
You have your local bodega onthe corner, you can go and pick
up whatever supplies orgroceries that you really need.
But I think, where this comesinto play for cities that are
bigger, or cities sorry, biggercities that aren't New York,
like Boston, chicago and otherplaces that don't really have
that as readily available yeah,it makes total sense to take
this for grocery shopping.
(10:39):
Another big usage 41% of tripsare people using zip cars to go
out of their city.
So you know, maybe the publictransit doesn't go from one
suburb to another or from onecity to the other, so that's
also a really good use case forit.
And 39% of trips are alsovisiting family and friends and
(10:59):
again, those may also be folkswho are outside of your sort of
immediate neighborhood orimmediate city.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Lastly, you've got 36% of these trips going towards
appointments.
And this one makes a lot ofsense too when you think about
it because, again, unfortunately, like outside of the major
cities in the United States, alot of the transit options are
not the most reliable.
You know, we always try to likepoint out some of the positives
and in a lot of places you canget around fine.
(11:26):
But I would say the vastmajority of the times that I
took transit when I was livingin Austin was not when I needed
to be somewhere at a specifictime.
If you have an appointmentwhere it's like, hey, you need
to be there at 1pm, to make sureyou're definitely going to be
there at 1pm, like you need toleave way earlier on the bus and
like, sure, if everything'sgoing smoothly you'll get there
(11:48):
early, but like, if you have onecanceled bus, one weird thing
happened on the bus, some weirdtraffic accident, whatever it
may be, you know you're gonnayou're gonna be late, and if you
can't be late, renting a Zipcarfor an appointment makes some
sense.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, it makes sense.
We also talk a lot about sortof that last mile of transit and
where you have those gaps youcan get generally close to where
you need to go, but maybethere's a little bit more
distance so you either have towalk or use a bike share or a
scooter.
In this case, this is also apotential use case.
You have zip cars or some typeof car sharing company that's
sort of near transit centers.
(12:24):
You can get in that car and youcan take it to wherever you
need to go to finish that lastmile.
But also, I think one of theimportant reasons why we should
promote this in cities is thatit does or does have the
potential to reduce congestionin the cities because you know
somebody who is taking that carout.
They're not going to use itevery single day, they're going
(12:44):
to revert back public transitwhen they need to, but it just
in general will create lessdemand for cars on the road or
less.
There's less cars on the roadbecause they're not.
You know everybody's not usingtheir own personal vehicle.
A couple of things there Ithink.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I think like, yes, not's not using their own
personal vehicle.
A couple things there.
I think I think like, yes, noteveryone's using their own
personal vehicle.
Uh, you need less parking,because you know what I mean.
Like, if you have a again tocite, their stat is uh, that was
from that study there.
Um, and I believe in that study.
I looked a little bit furtherinto it just to make sure it
wasn't some bs study and it'snot, it's, it's real.
Um, but it's it's.
It cites somewhere between nineand thirteen uh, cars being
(13:19):
taken off the road, personalcars being taken off the road
per zip car.
Um, so the parking element tothis is is huge, um, if you
don't need as many surfaceparking lots everywhere, all
that sort of stuff, um, and thenthe other kind of comparison
you could make is like well, whydo people need these car shares
when they could just uber?
Um, a couple of reasons.
Number one if you're runningmultiple errands, uh, it's
(13:40):
really annoying to like, oh, Ineed to go to the grocery store
for one thing, and then I needto go to, uh, the post office,
and then I need to go somewhereelse, and now, all of a sudden,
you're like schlepping thethings from your first
appointment spot into the Uber,out of the Uber to your next
spot into the Uber, out of theUber to the net, and like that's
not really feasible, whereasthe car share in this case you,
(14:01):
you know you can leave yourgroceries in the car for a
little bit when you run into thepost office or to wherever you
may be going.
So that's the other comparison.
And then the you know Uber orLyft model also then has these
cars driving around, justdriving around around, waiting
for their next ride, also on theroad, which isn't very
(14:22):
efficient, whether it's anautonomous I know right now all
the autonomous vehicles arebeing brought back up into the
conversation again, as Teslajust rolled out their robo taxis
and whatnot but those cars aredriving around empty sometimes,
which contributes to traffic onthe road.
So, yeah, a a lot to thinkabout.
With this, we're gonna jumpright back into this episode in
just a second, but first, if youhave not liked this video, go
(14:44):
ahead and do so.
Also, leave a comment.
We love reading all of them andrespond to as many as we can,
and be sure that you aresubscribed so that you catch
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Speaker 2 (15:02):
Just be sure to leave us a rating and give us a
comment.
I had a little bit ofexperience with a similar system
years ago.
I mean, this was when I I wasearly in Austin.
It would have been my firstyear in town.
I was dating somebody who didnot have a very reliable car,
and we would, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
I already know that this is not Brent.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
This is not Brent.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we wouldgo places around town and we'd
occasionally use the bus.
But whenever we had to go to dothings like go to make a quick
grocery store stop or something,we would use a service called
Car2Go.
And Car2Go was this prettylarge fleet of smart cars and if
(15:44):
you're familiar with smart cars, they're the little tiny like
tiny, tiny little cars likelittle roller skates.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Yep, those are probably pretty scary to ride
around in an Austin, honestly, Imean it was.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
It was at first for sure.
I was like looking up safetystats one day, like on the on
the drive Right.
It was definitely a little, alittle scary Texas, you know
giant big trucks everywhere butit was cool to be able to sign
up for the service.
They would give you a littlecard that you would use to like
swipe at the door to get in andyou would check out the car on
(16:18):
the app.
It would hold it for you, go tothe car, swipe yourself in and
then you were free to use thecar throughout the day.
What was interesting was, ifyou wanted to do this in the
most cost-effective way, youcould take the car, go to the
grocery store and when you exitthe vehicle you would like end
(16:38):
your trip kind of like a ascooter, like you'd end your
trip and then just hope the carwas there when you came back in.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Like probably 70% of the time it wasn't there when we
would come back so, oh wow, soit was pretty popular then
people were using it, yeah itwas actually pretty popular.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
but, like that was, my biggest fear is we would take
it somewhere and we wouldn'thold it and come back out and
the car would be gone.
Obviously, you could hold itfor a longer time if you needed
to, but it was a really coolsystem and we used it quite a
bit getting around town.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
It's kind of a shame as we were talking about this.
I feel like Austin could reallybenefit from having a system
like this today.
I know it's been a while sinceany of these systems.
I think I remember correct meme if I'm wrong was there one
that was doing this with teslaslike a couple years ago?
there may have been, but alsozip car has existed in austin
too true, but I I feel like it'snot, and maybe it's on me for
(17:29):
just like not looking into it,but I'm just thinking that there
is a world where, like jerryand I, could have lived car free
in austin if there was a zipcar spot at the triangle.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Now watch, I'm going to look it up and there's like a
zip car spot at the trianglethat exists and I've but I used
to see there, I used to seelittle signs all over the place
that was like zip, car parkingonly or car share parking, so
that it used to be, uh, maybemore popular.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Maybe I also just I'm not noticing it nowadays yeah
and uh, as I've mentioned acouple times throughout, I mean
the.
The idea for the episode kindof came from the last couple of
days as Jerry and I've beenmoving into our new place.
Yeah, I mean, to buy furniturehere without a car is to buy
furniture anywhere without a caris tricky.
But I'm learning that likehaving things shipped here is
(18:16):
pretty slow and not free, whichis kind of the opposite of the
united states.
I feel like you can buyanything with free shipping and
have it delivered in like sixhours or something stupid
sometimes now, or like likewaiting two days now is like a
long time for shipping.
I feel like in the us and uh,that is like the fastest I'm
(18:36):
seeing anything be shipped hereand it's like with an extra fee.
So I wanted to try this.
Uh, uh, tile auto.
Um, unfortunately you needed aneu driver's license to be able
to do it, so I had to go throughand rent a like a van thing
through uh enterprise, which wasmuch more expensive than the
tile auto trip would have been.
(18:57):
But I was seeing those all overthe place and it made it so
that the move was possible, andeven just renting the car for
the day made it so that we couldget some of the bigger pieces
of furniture, like the couchthat I'm sitting on.
We basically made a trip to anIkea 45 minutes away I just like
they're generally not in themiddle of town.
You wouldn't want to be moving.
With the amount of boxes we hadand on track we wouldn't have
(19:17):
been able to.
We had to do like 10 trips toikea, um, but so we did that and
then, to contrast it, like thenext day we didn't have the car
anymore.
We obviously still need morefurniture.
We're gonna need more furniturebasically every day for the
next month.
I don't know we've got Um.
We went to another store that'slike accessible in town.
I live only a block and a halfaway from one of the tram lines
(19:38):
in town here, which is amazingto have that ability.
Uh, not trying to rub it in,but um, it's a very, very nice
little walk over and you can geton the tram during the week.
It comes every 10 minutes andum, but anyway I took it down to
uh, another like it's like a,it's called a resta, it's like a
target, basically, um, but weloaded up on a whole bunch of
stuff, including a rug, and whatI'll say was nice is like, oh,
(20:02):
it's obviously like bulky andawkward to move all that stuff,
but the trams and the buses heretend to actually have like more
space at in them for, uh, likekind of the area where you'd
have for folks who might be in awheelchair or a parent with a
stroller.
Um, those areas are bigger on alot of the transit here so far
is what I've seen so we wereable to make it happen, but it's
(20:24):
still a pain in the butt andyou have to be able to be like
young and, like you know, I wasgonna say young and strong.
I don't, but I don't think I'mthat strong, but but young and
like fit though to be able tocarry all your stuff that long
distance.
So, um, you know, having thecar share options makes it so
that you know you could live carfree, but when you do need it,
(20:48):
um, you know you have thatoption to be able to make those
trips.
And I just think it's like it'ssomething that needs to be
looked into a lot more andsomething that kind of falls off
the radar.
I feel like I hadn't reallythought much about it until this
week.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
No, and it's a good.
It's a good thing for a lot ofpeople to know that the option
exists.
I think there are a lot ofpeople who might be open to
going car free or reducing a car, but they always go citing
excuses like well, when I haveto go buy furniture, if I have
to go buy something bulky, orwhen I'm doing my grocery runs,
like I need a larger vehicle andit's going to, and I don't want
(21:21):
to use the bus or train to dothat.
If you have options like thisand you live in a city, that
it's that it works.
You know.
As long as people know thatthis exists, maybe maybe they
look into it, maybe they doreduce that car ownership or
they uh find ways to changetheir commuting patterns.
So, yeah, it's a really coolservice that's out there that
really does support thecommunities and support our
cities and reducing congestionand just sort of challenging
(21:43):
people's ideas on how theycommute and how they use the
roads that exist, totally.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
So with that I mean, take a look.
If you've been trying to go carlight or you're already car
light and you're trying to gocar free, maybe explore Zipcar.
I know that we keep mentioningZipcar because at least in the
US, that's kind of the one bigone nationwide cities.
So keep an eye out in differentcities for competitors that are
(22:13):
doing this same kind of thingand it might be a good step for
you to be able to go car light,car free, um, and also like save
money at the same time.
Again, we haven't reallytouched on it on this episode,
but we've talked about in thepast like car ownership is
expensive, like you're lucky ifyou're spending less than 500 a
month on car ownership.
It's more than I mean 500 amonth.
(22:33):
When you're lucky if you'respending less than $500 a month
on car ownership, it's more thanI mean $500 a month when you're
talking car payment, insurance,all this sort of stuff, like
you'd be lucky to have that.
Now.
And if you have a gas vehicle,the amount you're spending on
fuel, yeah, yeah, maintenanceall this sort of stuff and, like
a car, sharing can save you alot of money.
Even if you have to spend $100a month on it, $150 a month on
(22:53):
it, in the long run you're verylikely going to be saving money,
so definitely worth checkingout.
Thank you all, though.
So much for watching this week.
Both of our setups at home willprobably improve over time here
.
Well, chris is in the exactsame spot.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
I know I'm all alone on the couch, I know, I know
here.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
well, chris is in the exact same spot, but, uh, I
know, I know, I know, um, I'm my, uh, I was going to record this
in the my little office space,um, but it is just an empty room
with a desk and a chair in itand the echo I mean, the echo in
this room is still pretty bad,but the echo was so bad that I
did not want to put you allthrough that because it would
have just sounded terrible.
So, uh, in the next coupleweeks, I want to try to build
out a nice little space to dothis sort of thing, and so, um,
(23:37):
we'll see.
But, um, if you want to supportthe show though, uh, the best
way to do so if you haven'tliked the video or subscribed,
please consider doing so.
Um, if you have experiencedoing car share in your city
elsewhere, if you've gotthoughts on the topic, if you
think we're wrong and that it'sterrible for cities and it just
is anything with cars is bad youcan let us know.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I'm sure there's some people out there who are in
that mindset, like why are theydoing this?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
there will definitely be complaints on this one for
sure.
If you want to support the showdirectly, the best ways to do
so are via our Patreon or buy mea coffee with the links in the
description.
You can also check out ourmerch store, but without further
ado.
Thank you all so much forwatching and enjoy the rest of
your Transit.
Tangents Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
That was not on sync.
That wasn't that bad.
I felt like it was close to onsync.
Fix it in post.
Doors are closing Public transit.
That's my way to roll On themetro.
I'm taking control.
Bus stops, train tracks it's mydaily grind.
Transit, it's the rhythm of mylife.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Can sharing cars help reduce traffic, cut emissions
and even boost public transit.
Today, we're exploring how carsharing services like Zipcar are
changing the way we think aboutowning and using cars.
All of this and more on TransitTangents.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Hey everybody, and welcome to this episode of
Transit Tangents.
My name is Lewis and I'm Chris,and today we are testing out
our kind of first remote setuphere, and we'll be doing an
episode talking about theimportance of car sharing to
help reduce car ownership.
The reason that we're doingthis remotely, though, is I have
officially made it to my newapartment in Germany.
(00:55):
We talked about this on thechannel several weeks ago,
months ago at this point.
It's been a long journey to gethere, but I'm sitting on one of
the only pieces of furniturethat I own at this point, which
is actually part of what spurredthe idea for this topic, which
is fairly non-conventional for achannel like ours, so focused
(01:16):
on public transit.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah well, we're transit tangents for a reason,
so we can go off on all kinds ofdifferent tangents, and this is
still supporting the overallgoal of increasing public
transportation.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Totally yeah, and the concept here too is, you know,
going car free, especially inthe United States, is difficult
in a lot of cases, and you knowa lot of people like Jerry and I
were car light, I would say, inAustin.
We had one car between the twoof us.
We both used our e-bikes to getaround a good chunk of the time
, but in some cases there aretrips that you can't do on an
(01:51):
e-bike, that are really hard todo on a bus or a train for that
matter, and that's kind of wherecar sharing kind of enters the
equation.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
This is something that you've probably seen in
your hometown or you've seenwhen you're out traveling.
There's a couple of differentcompanies that have existed out
there that have really tried tobring this car sharing to the
masses.
Lewis, what are you seeing inGermany?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah.
So it's kind of the idea forthis episode is I've been trying
to kind of get my apartmentfurnished and I've been seeing a
company local here in my regioncalled Tile Auto that has, you
know, kind of essentially asystem set up almost like think
of it like dockable bikes,except instead of actual docks
(02:42):
it's just like parking spotsthat are specific to their
rental car service.
But in the US we see thiseverywhere, with Zipcar as the
kind of most prominent system.
Zipcar has been around since2000.
They operate across most of theUnited States but also around
the world, and they're kind ofset up as a membership model.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah.
So, for an example, you couldlive in a city like Boston where
, if you wanted to join Zipcar,there would be a membership fee
of like $9 per month, and thenyou have access to a fleet of
these Zipcars all over the citywhere you can rent them starting
at about $14 an hour or about$100 per day.
And that also includes thingslike the cost of gas, which is
(03:25):
crazy to me that it alsoincludes the cost of gas,
although there are probably somecertain mileage thresholds that
you can't exceed for that gasto count.
But still, really, really coolsetup.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, and those thresholds do exist.
But, like when you compare thisto the cost of, like, renting a
car at your normal car rentalagency or something like that,
this is really cheap, especiallyif it is like, oh, I need to go
pick up this one specific thingat a store, I need to move this
piece of furniture to myfriend's house or whatever it
may be, where you only need thecar for one or two hours.
You know, renting a car for twohours in this example would be
(04:00):
28 bucks, versus going to rent acar from Enterprise or Hertz or
whatever it may be is probablygoing to cost you like a hundred
bucks at least.
And then you have to pay forgas and you have to worry about
insurance and all this otherstuff all stacked on top of it.
So definitely pretty convenient.
And Zipcar has kind of puttogether this pretty cool page
on their website that gives yousome statistics about their
(04:24):
users website that gives yousome statistics about their
users as well as a link to apaper by the Journal of
Transportation Research Boardthat actually cites that one
Zipcar takes up to 13 personallyowned cars off the street.
So in areas like Boston or NewYork where these Zipcars are
prevalent.
A lot of people are signing up.
Taking upwards of 13 personallyowned cars off the street is
pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, that's really impressive, especially
considering how many cars thatthey probably have deployed in
each of these cities.
Some other cool stats that theyprovided and info about the
Zipcar users 83% of the Zipcarmembers actually don't own a car
at all, which is also crazy tome but 83 are using the system
(05:06):
and they don't own a car.
Uh, 27 of members actuallyditch their cars within the
first year of joining zip caryeah, that's.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
That is like super positive to me, like the first
one.
I think like 83 of car membersnot owning a car makes some
sense, because if you own a caryou're probably not going to be
renting it that much.
But 27 of people who sign upfor a membership selling their
car within a year is huge.
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, absolutely.
That's huge and such a coolstat that they can collect.
But it shows the impact thatservices like this would have in
your cities 49% of people whoare Zipcar members postponed
either buying or leasing a newvehicle.
Because why do you need to buyor lease a new vehicle if you
have access to one on yourstreet already?
And 50 percent of single carhouseholds and 50 percent of
(05:53):
multi-car households wouldpurchase an additional vehicle
if they couldn't access Zipcar.
So now you have these families,these households that probably
would be in the market to buy acar anyway, but with the
availability of these zip cars,they don't really need to.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah, all of those stats are super encouraging to
see, and earlier on in theepisode too, you were saying
it's weird that we'd be talkingabout this, considering we talk
so heavily about public transit.
But really I do see car sharingas something that is very
public transit adjacent and cancompliment folks who compliment
the way folks get around, whoare public transit users.
(06:31):
So when you look at folks whouse Zipcar, 63% of members
frequently use publictransportation.
So 63% of people who are usingZipcar and are members use
public transportation to getaround.
Nearly half of them ridetransit more than five times per
week.
So these are folks who areevery single day commuting to
and from work or whatever it maybe.
(06:52):
They are frequent transit userswho are the vast majority of
people using Zipcar.
And another fun fact here is 82%of the members actually walk to
pick up their Zipcar, andthat's because the way that
their model is set up and thisis similar to how the model of
the one that I've mentioned here, tile Auto, where I live in
Yena is that they just have likeone or two parking spots spread
(07:14):
out across all differentneighborhoods.
It's not like you go to thisone giant parking lot somewhere
that's got 100 zip cars in it.
It's small, know smalllocalized, like I said at the
beginning, kind of similar to asetup of like a dockable bike
system where you've got you knowlittle nodes all over the city
where you can go um and it makesit so that you could walk to go
pick up the zip car so I kindof think of it as, uh, the micro
(07:37):
mobility that we already havewith the scooters, except
obviously larger, but thisactually predates the microility
movement with all the scootersand small personal devices on
the street, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
So why would somebody who typically uses public
transit have to use a Zipcarhere and there or throughout
their week?
Zipcar has a couple of stats,that really sort of detail why
people are using this service.
49% of the Zipcar trips arepeople just running errands, and
these are errands that do notinclude their things like
(08:10):
grocery shopping.
These are errands.
Maybe it's going to the doctoror going to places in the city
that aren't easily accessible bypublic transit.
Or it could be like yourexample, louis, of having to
furnish a new apartment and notwanting to take a giant couch on
the bus.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, totally, and I can even think of like going to
places like a Home Depot youwant to buy you know you're
working on a project in yourbackyard a garden center, buying
a new grill or whatever it maybe, picking up and dropping
things off at your friend'shouse if you need to, you know
need to borrow a cooler orwhatever it may be.
Um, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Uh, after errands, the next I was going to say all
of us probably have this mentalimage of seeing people in New
York city on the subway carryinglike tables across town, and
probably anybody who's listeningto those who lives in New York
city has had an experience wherethey're trying to like pick up
things and move them across townusing public transit.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
so if you have one of those experiences, we'd love to
actually have you comment andtalk about it I just watched the
tiktok, like yesterday, ofthese two guys carrying a couch
through the subway, but the waythey were doing it, like the
couch was just like rubbing upagainst the ground and I was
just like I don't know if I'dwant to sit on that couch after
it made that journey.
I don't know, but after errandsat 49% you also 47% of users do
(09:30):
use the Zipcar to go to thegrocery store Makes a lot of
sense.
You know, oftentimes you'regoing to the grocery store
shopping for like the entireweek.
It's not like you're going infor one or two items, and you
know, if you don't own a car,you're probably not necessarily
shopping like that.
You're probably having to dolike lots of small trips
carrying things.
So to be able to knock out allyour groceries especially if you
(09:53):
can rent a car, for, you know,a pretty affordable amount to
limit those trips, it can behelpful, although I would say,
though, that I think, like youknow, having more small grocery
stores around can kind of helpalleviate some of that, which I
know is something that a lot ofcities in the United States are
trying to work on, and I thinkthat that's probably the better
solution than making it so that,oh, I'll just rent a car to go
(10:13):
do this every time.
But it makes a lot of sensethat that is another high usage
point.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Kind of like the bodega culture in New York.
You have your local bodega onthe corner, you can go and pick
up whatever supplies orgroceries that you really need.
But I think, where this comesinto play for cities that are
bigger, or cities sorry, biggercities that aren't New York,
like Boston, chicago and otherplaces that don't really have
that as readily available yeah,it makes total sense to take
this for grocery shopping.
(10:39):
Another big usage 41% of tripsare people using zip cars to go
out of their city.
So you know, maybe the publictransit doesn't go from one
suburb to another or from onecity to the other, so that's
also a really good use case forit.
And 39% of trips are alsovisiting family and friends and
(10:59):
again, those may also be folkswho are outside of your sort of
immediate neighborhood orimmediate city.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Lastly, you've got 36% of these trips going towards
appointments.
And this one makes a lot ofsense too when you think about
it because, again, unfortunately, like outside of the major
cities in the United States, alot of the transit options are
not the most reliable.
You know, we always try to likepoint out some of the positives
and in a lot of places you canget around fine.
(11:26):
But I would say the vastmajority of the times that I
took transit when I was livingin Austin was not when I needed
to be somewhere at a specifictime.
If you have an appointmentwhere it's like, hey, you need
to be there at 1pm, to make sureyou're definitely going to be
there at 1pm, like you need toleave way earlier on the bus and
like, sure, if everything'sgoing smoothly you'll get there
(11:48):
early, but like, if you have onecanceled bus, one weird thing
happened on the bus, some weirdtraffic accident, whatever it
may be, you know you're gonnayou're gonna be late, and if you
can't be late, renting a Zipcarfor an appointment makes some
sense.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, it makes sense.
We also talk a lot about sortof that last mile of transit and
where you have those gaps youcan get generally close to where
you need to go, but maybethere's a little bit more
distance so you either have towalk or use a bike share or a
scooter.
In this case, this is also apotential use case.
You have zip cars or some typeof car sharing company that's
sort of near transit centers.
(12:24):
You can get in that car and youcan take it to wherever you
need to go to finish that lastmile.
But also, I think one of theimportant reasons why we should
promote this in cities is thatit does or does have the
potential to reduce congestionin the cities because you know
somebody who is taking that carout.
They're not going to use itevery single day, they're going
(12:44):
to revert back public transitwhen they need to, but it just
in general will create lessdemand for cars on the road or
less.
There's less cars on the roadbecause they're not.
You know everybody's not usingtheir own personal vehicle.
A couple of things there Ithink.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I think like, yes, not's not using their own
personal vehicle.
A couple things there.
I think I think like, yes, noteveryone's using their own
personal vehicle.
Uh, you need less parking,because you know what I mean.
Like, if you have a again tocite, their stat is uh, that was
from that study there.
Um, and I believe in that study.
I looked a little bit furtherinto it just to make sure it
wasn't some bs study and it'snot, it's, it's real.
Um, but it's it's.
It cites somewhere between nineand thirteen uh, cars being
(13:19):
taken off the road, personalcars being taken off the road
per zip car.
Um, so the parking element tothis is is huge, um, if you
don't need as many surfaceparking lots everywhere, all
that sort of stuff, um, and thenthe other kind of comparison
you could make is like well, whydo people need these car shares
when they could just uber?
Um, a couple of reasons.
Number one if you're runningmultiple errands, uh, it's
(13:40):
really annoying to like, oh, Ineed to go to the grocery store
for one thing, and then I needto go to, uh, the post office,
and then I need to go somewhereelse, and now, all of a sudden,
you're like schlepping thethings from your first
appointment spot into the Uber,out of the Uber to your next
spot into the Uber, out of theUber to the net, and like that's
not really feasible, whereasthe car share in this case you,
(14:01):
you know you can leave yourgroceries in the car for a
little bit when you run into thepost office or to wherever you
may be going.
So that's the other comparison.
And then the you know Uber orLyft model also then has these
cars driving around, justdriving around around, waiting
for their next ride, also on theroad, which isn't very
(14:22):
efficient, whether it's anautonomous I know right now all
the autonomous vehicles arebeing brought back up into the
conversation again, as Teslajust rolled out their robo taxis
and whatnot but those cars aredriving around empty sometimes,
which contributes to traffic onthe road.
So, yeah, a a lot to thinkabout.
With this, we're gonna jumpright back into this episode in
just a second, but first, if youhave not liked this video, go
(14:44):
ahead and do so.
Also, leave a comment.
We love reading all of them andrespond to as many as we can,
and be sure that you aresubscribed so that you catch
every episode as they come out,please share this with your
friends, and if you don't havetime to watch YouTube videos in
the future, you can catch us onany of the podcast platforms
that are out there.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Just be sure to leave us a rating and give us a
comment.
I had a little bit ofexperience with a similar system
years ago.
I mean, this was when I I wasearly in Austin.
It would have been my firstyear in town.
I was dating somebody who didnot have a very reliable car,
and we would, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
I already know that this is not Brent.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
This is not Brent.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we wouldgo places around town and we'd
occasionally use the bus.
But whenever we had to go to dothings like go to make a quick
grocery store stop or something,we would use a service called
Car2Go.
And Car2Go was this prettylarge fleet of smart cars and if
(15:44):
you're familiar with smart cars, they're the little tiny like
tiny, tiny little cars likelittle roller skates.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Yep, those are probably pretty scary to ride
around in an Austin, honestly, Imean it was.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
It was at first for sure.
I was like looking up safetystats one day, like on the on
the drive Right.
It was definitely a little, alittle scary Texas, you know
giant big trucks everywhere butit was cool to be able to sign
up for the service.
They would give you a littlecard that you would use to like
swipe at the door to get in andyou would check out the car on
(16:18):
the app.
It would hold it for you, go tothe car, swipe yourself in and
then you were free to use thecar throughout the day.
What was interesting was, ifyou wanted to do this in the
most cost-effective way, youcould take the car, go to the
grocery store and when you exitthe vehicle you would like end
(16:38):
your trip kind of like a ascooter, like you'd end your
trip and then just hope the carwas there when you came back in.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Like probably 70% of the time it wasn't there when we
would come back so, oh wow, soit was pretty popular then
people were using it, yeah itwas actually pretty popular.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
but, like that was, my biggest fear is we would take
it somewhere and we wouldn'thold it and come back out and
the car would be gone.
Obviously, you could hold itfor a longer time if you needed
to, but it was a really coolsystem and we used it quite a
bit getting around town.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
It's kind of a shame as we were talking about this.
I feel like Austin could reallybenefit from having a system
like this today.
I know it's been a while sinceany of these systems.
I think I remember correct meme if I'm wrong was there one
that was doing this with teslaslike a couple years ago?
there may have been, but alsozip car has existed in austin
too true, but I I feel like it'snot, and maybe it's on me for
(17:29):
just like not looking into it,but I'm just thinking that there
is a world where, like jerryand I, could have lived car free
in austin if there was a zipcar spot at the triangle.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Now watch, I'm going to look it up and there's like a
zip car spot at the trianglethat exists and I've but I used
to see there, I used to seelittle signs all over the place
that was like zip, car parkingonly or car share parking, so
that it used to be, uh, maybemore popular.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Maybe I also just I'm not noticing it nowadays yeah
and uh, as I've mentioned acouple times throughout, I mean
the.
The idea for the episode kindof came from the last couple of
days as Jerry and I've beenmoving into our new place.
Yeah, I mean, to buy furniturehere without a car is to buy
furniture anywhere without a caris tricky.
But I'm learning that likehaving things shipped here is
(18:16):
pretty slow and not free, whichis kind of the opposite of the
united states.
I feel like you can buyanything with free shipping and
have it delivered in like sixhours or something stupid
sometimes now, or like likewaiting two days now is like a
long time for shipping.
I feel like in the us and uh,that is like the fastest I'm
(18:36):
seeing anything be shipped hereand it's like with an extra fee.
So I wanted to try this.
Uh, uh, tile auto.
Um, unfortunately you needed aneu driver's license to be able
to do it, so I had to go throughand rent a like a van thing
through uh enterprise, which wasmuch more expensive than the
tile auto trip would have been.
(18:57):
But I was seeing those all overthe place and it made it so
that the move was possible, andeven just renting the car for
the day made it so that we couldget some of the bigger pieces
of furniture, like the couchthat I'm sitting on.
We basically made a trip to anIkea 45 minutes away I just like
they're generally not in themiddle of town.
You wouldn't want to be moving.
With the amount of boxes we hadand on track we wouldn't have
(19:17):
been able to.
We had to do like 10 trips toikea, um, but so we did that and
then, to contrast it, like thenext day we didn't have the car
anymore.
We obviously still need morefurniture.
We're gonna need more furniturebasically every day for the
next month.
I don't know we've got Um.
We went to another store that'slike accessible in town.
I live only a block and a halfaway from one of the tram lines
(19:38):
in town here, which is amazingto have that ability.
Uh, not trying to rub it in,but um, it's a very, very nice
little walk over and you can geton the tram during the week.
It comes every 10 minutes andum, but anyway I took it down to
uh, another like it's like a,it's called a resta, it's like a
target, basically, um, but weloaded up on a whole bunch of
stuff, including a rug, and whatI'll say was nice is like, oh,
(20:02):
it's obviously like bulky andawkward to move all that stuff,
but the trams and the buses heretend to actually have like more
space at in them for, uh, likekind of the area where you'd
have for folks who might be in awheelchair or a parent with a
stroller.
Um, those areas are bigger on alot of the transit here so far
is what I've seen so we wereable to make it happen, but it's
(20:24):
still a pain in the butt andyou have to be able to be like
young and, like you know, I wasgonna say young and strong.
I don't, but I don't think I'mthat strong, but but young and
like fit though to be able tocarry all your stuff that long
distance.
So, um, you know, having thecar share options makes it so
that you know you could live carfree, but when you do need it,
(20:48):
um, you know you have thatoption to be able to make those
trips.
And I just think it's like it'ssomething that needs to be
looked into a lot more andsomething that kind of falls off
the radar.
I feel like I hadn't reallythought much about it until this
week.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
No, and it's a good.
It's a good thing for a lot ofpeople to know that the option
exists.
I think there are a lot ofpeople who might be open to
going car free or reducing a car, but they always go citing
excuses like well, when I haveto go buy furniture, if I have
to go buy something bulky, orwhen I'm doing my grocery runs,
like I need a larger vehicle andit's going to, and I don't want
(21:21):
to use the bus or train to dothat.
If you have options like thisand you live in a city, that
it's that it works.
You know.
As long as people know thatthis exists, maybe maybe they
look into it, maybe they doreduce that car ownership or
they uh find ways to changetheir commuting patterns.
So, yeah, it's a really coolservice that's out there that
really does support thecommunities and support our
cities and reducing congestionand just sort of challenging
(21:43):
people's ideas on how theycommute and how they use the
roads that exist, totally.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
So with that I mean, take a look.
If you've been trying to go carlight or you're already car
light and you're trying to gocar free, maybe explore Zipcar.
I know that we keep mentioningZipcar because at least in the
US, that's kind of the one bigone nationwide cities.
So keep an eye out in differentcities for competitors that are
(22:13):
doing this same kind of thingand it might be a good step for
you to be able to go car light,car free, um, and also like save
money at the same time.
Again, we haven't reallytouched on it on this episode,
but we've talked about in thepast like car ownership is
expensive, like you're lucky ifyou're spending less than 500 a
month on car ownership.
It's more than I mean 500 amonth.
(22:33):
When you're lucky if you'respending less than $500 a month
on car ownership, it's more thanI mean $500 a month when you're
talking car payment, insurance,all this sort of stuff, like
you'd be lucky to have that.
Now.
And if you have a gas vehicle,the amount you're spending on
fuel, yeah, yeah, maintenanceall this sort of stuff and, like
a car, sharing can save you alot of money.
Even if you have to spend $100a month on it, $150 a month on
(22:53):
it, in the long run you're verylikely going to be saving money,
so definitely worth checkingout.
Thank you all, though.
So much for watching this week.
Both of our setups at home willprobably improve over time here
.
Well, chris is in the exactsame spot.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
I know I'm all alone on the couch, I know, I know
here.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
well, chris is in the exact same spot, but, uh, I
know, I know, I know, um, I'm my, uh, I was going to record this
in the my little office space,um, but it is just an empty room
with a desk and a chair in itand the echo I mean, the echo in
this room is still pretty bad,but the echo was so bad that I
did not want to put you allthrough that because it would
have just sounded terrible.
So, uh, in the next coupleweeks, I want to try to build
out a nice little space to dothis sort of thing, and so, um,
(23:37):
we'll see.
But, um, if you want to supportthe show though, uh, the best
way to do so if you haven'tliked the video or subscribed,
please consider doing so.
Um, if you have experiencedoing car share in your city
elsewhere, if you've gotthoughts on the topic, if you
think we're wrong and that it'sterrible for cities and it just
is anything with cars is bad youcan let us know.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I'm sure there's some people out there who are in
that mindset, like why are theydoing this?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
there will definitely be complaints on this one for
sure.
If you want to support the showdirectly, the best ways to do
so are via our Patreon or buy mea coffee with the links in the
description.
You can also check out ourmerch store, but without further
ado.
Thank you all so much forwatching and enjoy the rest of
your Transit.
Tangents Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
That was not on sync.
That wasn't that bad.
I felt like it was close to onsync.
Fix it in post.
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