By Kathy Wang
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
FORT GREENE — For those who occasionally need to use a car for a couple of hours but don’t want to go through the hassle of owning one — and being forced to join the frenzied search for an increasingly cherished parking spot — there’s an answer, in physical form.
Zipcar, said to be the world’s largest car-sharing company, has continued its expansion into Brooklyn with its recent service launches in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. The company has brought five vehicles to both the DMK Garage at 116 Waverly Ave. and the Armory Parking Garage at 172 Vanderbilt Ave., with plans to bring up to 10 additional cars to the area during the next several months.
“We actually had members of the community send us a petition,” said Zipcar’s New York Regional Vice President Julian Espiritu. “That was enough interest and demand.”
The “Bring Zipcar to Fort Greene” petition, which had gathered 179 signatures as of Friday afternoon, was created and written by Scott Lamb, who also made the blog ZipFortGreene in an attempt to find potential parking locations for Zipcars and to gather signatures for a petition for the company to add cars to the Fort Greene/Clinton Hill neighborhood.
“To be honest, we first tried contacting Zipcar about two or three years ago, when they hadn’t really delved into Brooklyn,” said Michael Blaise Backer, executive director of the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership (also behind the “Myrtle Avenue” blog), the local Business Improvement District and the Local Development Corporation overseeing Myrtle Avenue’s economic revitalization. “And then a few months ago, community residents had begun putting up Web sites and blogs of all sorts and a petition to bring Zipcar here, so we decided to give it another shot with all the initiatives and put them in touch with as many parking garage owners as we knew.”
In response to the demand by residents and businesses during the past several months for Zipcars to alleviate parking concerns and provide an alternative to public transportation, the company announced its launch in the two neighborhoods on June 12. Zipcar has been adding additional vehicles to areas of Brooklyn ever since, with cars now in Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Prospect Heights, Red Hook, Williamsburg and other Brooklyn neighborhoods.
“It’s more conducive to not own a car in New York City, but sometimes you just need a car for a few hours to go to the doctor’s office or something,” said Espiritu. “Our mission is to provide individuals, especially those whose main source of transportation is public transportation, with alternatives to owning their own vehicles.”
“The expansion has been slow but steady, and even more so now, with our newest ones in the DUMBO area,” said Zipcar Field Staff Coordinator Robert Graham, who described the expansion as being “also good for local commerce” with funds that are saved from transportation costs going instead towards stimulating economic development.
Zipcar, a self-service, on-demand car-sharing company founded in 1999 by Boston residents Robin Chase and Antje Danielson, who had seen a similar company while on vacation in Berlin, had its first cars on the road by 2000 and today operates 2,750 vehicles used by some 100,000 members — including some businesses and universities — in more than 23 cities across the country and in London, England.
“It’s an expensive thing to own a car in Brooklyn,” said Backer. “Especially with the high density in Brooklyn, I’ve always felt Zipcar was the perfect concept scale-wise.”
The vehicles, a varied fleet including BMWs, MINI Coopers, Prius Hybrids and pickup trucks, are placed on streets and in garages, where they can be unlocked and accessed with a “Zipcard” by individual or business members 24/7 after reserving in advance by phone or through the Internet. Rates begin at $7.50 per hour and $56 per day, with gas, parking, 125 miles and basic insurance and maintenance included in all reservations.
“There were only a few communities in Downtown Brooklyn that didn’t really have access to Zipcar’s service,” said Backer, who said his organization is still working to get Zipcar to expand into several other sites, especially further east into Clinton Hill and the area around the Brooklyn Academy of Music. “One thing we’ve been trying to work on is creating more space to give back to the public realm, especially with all the current congestion-pricing talk and street-parking laws. This move will provide residents with more transportation choices without contributing to additional on-street parking demand.”
Espiritu estimates the current number of Zipcars in Brooklyn to be around 300. Nearly 40 percent of members have either sold their cars or stopped their purchasing decisions, according to Zipcar. The company also states on its Web site that each Zipcar takes more than 20 privately owned vehicles off the road, although Espiritu cited a 2004 U.C. Berkeley study that put the number at between 7 and 10.
A lack of a comprehensive insurance policy (covering only the state minimum), the frequent difficulty of finding an available car last-minute during weekends and the recent decision to end a partnership between Zipcar and XM Satellite Radio — which until May had been available in all its vehicles — are among the flaws customers cite. Overall, though, users seem to be content with the service.
“From Myrtle Avenue’s perspective, we’ve been studying for a while the strict parking situation and searching for ways to increase parking turnover, which in turn really helps small business owners,” said Backer. “People give up after a while if they can’t find a parking spot, and Zipcar really helps remove cars from the streets. And less cars means more space for pedestrians and bicyclists and others who aren’t driving.”
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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