Hi,

I'm wondering about whether it's such a good idea to cluster zipcars. The Gordon St zipcar has been relocated to become a second zipcar at Griggs Street. The Gordon St car was a lucky 2 minute walk from me, albeit in a very inconvenient parking space behind a dumpster.

The main effect of this is that it makes me less likely to take the zipcar for small trips, especially in combination with the new fees. If I want to pick up my drycleaning at Ecoluxe (an environmentally friendly cleaner in Brookline village) for example, it is half the cost to simply take the bus there and take a taxi back, and less hassle than picking up and dropping off the zipcar. Similarly, I now take taxis home for grocery shopping once a week. Even if I were to do all my errands at once, that would mean renting the zipcar for 5 hours, and taxis, though costly, are a cheaper option. Now that zipcar is less conveniently located, it is no longer less convenient to take a cab.

I thought the purpose was to make zipcar available to everyone as a resource, and unless I'm mistaken there's no car between Griggs and Washington near Commonwealth. I understand if the car on Gordon was not being used as much as the Griggs, but in general it doesn't make much sense to cluster the cars if we want a certain saturation to gain as many members as possible.

Unfortunately, that, plus the higher daily rates, means I only use zipcar for whole day excursions or whole day errands. I like being able to do this, but I thought zipcar wants to discourage that type of use, so this doesn't make much sense to me. However, please keep the car specials so I can use zipcar in an affordable manner!

Thanks,

Beth

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2004

Answers

I agree with the general spirit of the above: I now tend only to use Zipcars for whole-day reservations, because of the higher monthly costs and the mileage thing. Therefore, it also seems odd to me that I'm now pressured into behavior _exactly_ the opposite of what Zipcar _claimed_ they hope to encourage.

-- Anonymous, April 02, 2004

I also generally agree with Beth, that the inclusion of mileage is anti-thetical to what Zipcar is for- reduced urban congestion in parking, traffic and pollution. Back when the hourly rate was low and the mileage reasonable, it made far more sense to take a car for just an hour or two, and I could figure out how to do a whole bunch of errands in 3 hours if I needed, but that didn't mean I actually had many miles to travel, so I am really bummed about this new mileage inclusive rate scale. I have been a Zipcar member since October 2000.

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2004

I agree with all of you, becouse I have planty things to do and I do it only onece in two weeks due to high cost of zipcar

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2005