Re: Preparing for electric cars on site and Zip Cars | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com) | |
Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2015 07:07:56 -0800 (PST) |
> On Feb 15, 2015, at 7:53 AM, Liz Ryan Cole <lizryancole [at] me.com> wrote: > > > I wonder if, as people are talking about electric cars, whether any cohousing > communities are sites where Zip cars are parked. If you are, do you find > that people from the larger community (not just your cohousing community) > uses them? If this should be a separate thread please reply with just Zip > Cars in the subject line. I did a serious investigation of Zip cars when they were introduced in DC. The contract then would have required that the Association agree to pay any difference between the income for hours used and $1500 a month. People would join and reserve the car online the same way other members do. Reservations would take care of the problem of who is using the car when. ZipCar takes care of maintenance, replacing a car when one is taken for servicing. Gas is included in the rental fees. Other people would not be able to use the car because our parking lot is locked and it would be hard to find. They like the cars to be in plain site and easily accessible. I think we could have worked out something with neighbors who use Zip Cars regularly. A dentist in the area has 2 Zip Cars in her parking area. $1500 a month would have been ~150 hours a month of driving. Rounding off, we needed a commitment to drive from several people to rent up to approximately 40 hours a week to pay for the car. 5-6 hours a day. We didn't have that much need for a car. Tt wouldn't have worked unless there were 2-3 people who drove several times a week for 3-4 hours. For example, someone in our neighborhood reserves one car every weekday afternoon to do a car-pool picking up children at school. We would need more rentals like that. I couldn't get commitments. We have active car borrowing in the community. I borrow from a person who drives 1-2 times month and his battery is often dead from lack of use. I use it one afternoon a week to ferry grandchildren to lessons and get groceries. That keeps it running for when he wants to use it. Another person has an arrangement to share another car. People ask a few times a month to borrow cars for unexpected reasons. We have one parking space per unit. Most people have given up their second cars. I think only one household has two cars but they just moved in. We are 2 blocks from the Metro. People will park on the street to allow guests to use their parking space. Stickers are required for street parking. There are guest passes that can be used but the ticket people often ignore them. We have three households without cars who allow their spaces to be reserved by other members. There are 6-8 rental cars within 2 blocks and more coming. We also have Cars2Go which are Smart Cars that rent by the minute. You can take them without reservations and leave them in any legal parking spot anywhere in the city. They can be located on any device with the software. You just go get them. One person in our neighborhood who lives 8-9 blocks from the Metro says that any given time there are 9 cars nearby. He can drive to the Metro when necessary. Living in the city has great advantages but having parking is still a huge convenience. One member during development suggested having few or no parking spaces. It was deal-breaker for many if not most. Partly for safety. I rent my spot but would not give it up because it significantly adds to the value of my unit. We've done nothing about preparing for electric cars. Sharon ---- Sharon Villines Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC http://www.takomavillage.org
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Preparing for electric cars on site mburkel [at] juno.com, February 14 2015
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Re: Preparing for electric cars on site and Zip Cars Liz Ryan Cole, February 15 2015
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Re: Preparing for electric cars on site and Zip Cars Carol Agate, February 15 2015
- Re: Preparing for electric cars on site and Zip Cars Sharon Villines, February 15 2015
- Re: Preparing for electric cars on site and Zip Cars Sharon Villines, February 15 2015
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Re: Preparing for electric cars on site and Zip Cars Carol Agate, February 15 2015
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Re: Preparing for electric cars on site and Zip Cars Liz Ryan Cole, February 15 2015
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Re: Preparing for electric cars on site Diana Carroll, February 15 2015
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Building with Equal Access & Preparing for electric cars on site Sharon Villines, February 16 2015
- Re: Building with Equal Access & Preparing for electric cars on site Diana Carroll, February 16 2015
- Re: Preparing for electric cars on site Jerry McIntire, February 16 2015
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Building with Equal Access & Preparing for electric cars on site Sharon Villines, February 16 2015
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