(no subject)

[bolson]

I'm getting frustrated with not having a car. There are getting to be 1-2
things a week I would go to except that I don't have one. There are
probably one or two more things that are more trouble than they should be.

I did the math and I guess I should get a ZipCar membership. It's not
intuitive though. For any one event, it seems like a bad deal. If I go for
a social event that's 4-6 hours, I'm paying $8.10/hr to be there. I'd be
worried about the psychological effect of being 'on zipcar time', wanting
to cut out early, or just worrying about the meter running that whole time
and the money ticking away.

The thing is that the rest of the time, when I'm not using the car, the
meter stops. If I own the car, the meter runs all the time. Depreciation,
maintenance, insurance; all of those things are always on. I could spend
$200/mo on zipcar for the next 10 years and still not add up to the base
price of a new car, by which time the car would have almost entirely
depreciated and run up quite some bills in repair and insurance.

So, basically I should just do it, use the zipcars parked a block away as
if my own car (not very much, based on my habits when I did own a car) and
I'll be doing OK.

Comments

[songblaze.livejournal.com]

I've actually decided to do much the same thing with PhillyCarShare, and sell my car.

Additionally...does zipcar provide insurance in the cost of rental? That was the final tipping point for me, realizing that I'd be shelling out circa $300/mo for insurance for my car here and couldn't reasonably run up that high a bill on the CarShare.

Anyhow, dunno if that factored into your figures.

~Blaze

[devreux.livejournal.com]

I'd love to know how it works out for you. I'm part of a one-car household. This is usually OK, since Pittsburgh has pretty decent transit if you live inside the city limits. But every once in a while, perhaps as often as once a week or so, it'd be great to have that second car ... I've been toying with the notion of signing up with FlexCar.

[soong.livejournal.com]

I was part of a two-person-one-car household for a couple years and it worked out very well with very few times we both wanted the car. It probably worked that way because we were both already defaulting to not using the car.

It'll take me a few weeks to get signed up for zipcar (I still need to trade in my CA licence for MA), but I'm sure I'll have some stories to share once it's underway.

[kerya.livejournal.com]

Don't forget the cost of renting a parking space in Cambridge. I think ZipCar is a great idea -- Ned uses one sometimes, you could ask him about it.

That said -- I switched to a prepaid cellular plan this April for much the same reasons. And while I'm saving lots of $$, I am hesitant to make social calls on the cell phone when I'm paying for every minute.

[queen-of-wands.livejournal.com]

I think this is the logic motive_nuance used when he sold his car and got a zipcar membership, down to the detail of just acting like he owns a car rather than focusing on how many dollars each outing costs.