An hour before I took this picture, Mayor Kasperzak of Mountain View was accepting a symbolic gray key fob from City Car Share's suit, about where this car is. They talked about what an honor it was to bring such a creative service to our fair city. The suit explained that Mountain View's first Car Share location is the company's 39th spot in its 5th city. Other places where they are established include San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and Palo Alto.

The system works on a membership basis. You fill out an application form that CityCarShare uses to verify that you are a good driver, and if you pass that they give you one of the gray fobs, which enables you to enter the car at times you can schedule on their website or by calling their toll free number. The service costs $10 per month plus $3.50 per hour plus mileage for actual car use.* This price includes gas, insurance, and everything else that it takes to make the service happen. Each car has a radio that reports on mileage and such when you return it to the spot at the end of the rental period.

Talking to one of the women from City Car Share, she explained to me that something like a sixth of the people that join the program go car free once they are members. We talked about how the location, just across the street from the CalTrain station, bus depot, and end of the VTA light rail line was as good as you are likely to find for such a service on the Peninsula.

Julie Lovins said about 7,500 people live in easy walking distance of the spot. It should be easy to find among them the 30 to 40 people that would keep one car busily employed. The target market is people who only want to do a little driving every now and then. The suit mentioned that they would love to expand the service if more customers make it necessary.

Tian Harter

*The average CityCarShare's member monthly bill is $60.00, cheap compared to the $500 that AAA estimates average people spend monthly to own a car.

Postscript: I went by the spot in early 2005. I turns out that the woman behind the company had gotten married, gotten pregnant, and moved back east. The guy that took over the operation decided that the south bay pods weren't making enough money to stick with, so he shut them down. The experiment continues up in San Francisco though...