Car Sharing May Ease Gridlock

SEATTLE, Feb. 16, 2005 — -- Ron Holden is a freelance writer who lives alone in a studio apartment in downtown Seattle. After a lifetime of buying, insuring and repairing cars, he's very happy not to own one anymore.

But occasionally he needs a car, and he can get one within minutes.

Holden has subscribed to a service called Flexcar. With a few finger strokes on his computer, he can get a car on short notice just about any time he wants.

"You don't need a car 24 hours a day," Holden said. "You only need it when you need it, and if you can be assured of having a car when you need it, why not share cars?"

The program is, in fact, called "car sharing." Holden pays $35 a year to belong to Flexcar. For that, he gets a key card that will activate any one of the cars in the system. When he makes a reservation for a car over the Internet, only his key card will open the car at the reserved time.

Holden is lucky to have a Flexcar parked right behind his building. Once his key card has activated the system, he pulls the key from the glove box, punches his code into the dash, and goes.

Flexcar in Seattle, and another company called Zipcar based in Boston, are betting that car sharing will become big business. The two companies have a combined membership that is approaching 60,000 people in about three dozen cities.

"The American dream really is, you say it's the dream of car ownership; it's really the dream of convenience," says Flexcar's chief executive officer, Lance Ayrault. The company has placed cars in convenient spots all over Seattle; across from the train station, near the ferry terminal, at a Baptist Church, even in a private driveway.

Basic membership is $35 a year. Gas, insurance and maintenance are included in the $9 an hour usage fee.

"[For] people, especially the people that live in and work in densely populated areas, car ownership is becoming extremely expensive, and it's only going to continue so," Ayrault said.

It is somewhat of an honor system. Drivers can't smoke in a Flexcar, and they are expected to keep it clean. Violators are fined.