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I just want to say that while I love the idea of car sharing services, the reality is that they're only slightly less expensive than owning, and compared to re
by ap22213 15y ago
I just want to say that while I love the idea of car sharing services, the reality is that they're only slightly less expensive than owning, and compared to renting from the big local car rental services, they're much more expensive. At least in the DC area.
I went car-less for about 6 months as an experiment. Initially, I tried to compute value from the local car sharing services, but it didn't compute. Plus, the nearby cars seemed to be heavily used, limiting availability. So, I never signed up with them. Instead, I discovered that with a little foresight and planning, I could get economy rentals from the big rental companies via priceline for like $12-15 a day. Of course, I had to pay for the gas, but insurance was covered by my credit card. It worked out well for times when I had to commute outside the urban area.
Inside the urban area of DC, I found that driving was extremely painful with traffic and parking, but oftentimes it was still less hassle than trying to get around the DC metro system. The DC metro system doesn't work. The train system has frequent delays, huge time gaps between trains, over-packed cars, limited times of operation, and trips are expensive. Furthermore, the bus system seems to have bizarre, unoptimized routes.
Anyway, I really want car-sharing to work, but it seems like it can only work in some geographical areas, under certain conditions, and with some local support. But, I'm always looking forward to new ideas in transportation; it's one of the worst parts of living in DC.
- woodpanel 15y agoNice insight. About DC: I've been to DC once for a couple of days. For tourist destinations the metro was fine, even though Georgetown seemed to be unaccessible due to its residents refusing a metro connection there (fear of gentrification?). Also the similarity of the stations made orientation from inside the train different for newcomers. I've also used the the SmartBike DC, which wasn't nice, since there are few bike lanes. About car sharing: My experience is that car sharing is cheaper than rental if you're using the car for less than 6-12 hours a day. But your right, those numbers work differently from town to town. As soon as I added expectable car price decline to the monthly costs of owning, car sharing became incredibly cheap. I'm also happy to not have to deal with maintanance and tax/insurance issues. If I'd had to travel by car daily, owning/leasing a car would still be the cheapest option.
- quatrevingts 15y agoGeorgetown does not have a metro stop primarily because it would delay people getting to the heart of the city, where most jobs are. Georgetown is a primarily commercial / residential neighborhood, not a job center, and the ridership calculations at the time did not justify a stop there.
- quatrevingts 15y agoCompared to NYC or Paris, the DC Metro is limited, but it's still the second-most-used system in the country, and far ahead of most American cities (SF in particular). Train headways are as low as 2 minutes during rush hour, and the system runs until 3 AM on Friday and Saturday night (unlike the BART which stops at midnight). It also goes close enough to almost everywhere you need to get to. I agree that maintenance-related delays on evenings and weekends can be significant, and packed Orange Line cars are a real problem. Hopefully the former will go away as the current round of maintenance is completed; we'll probably need to build a second Potomac River tunnel and the M St subway to resolve the latter.