Feature
By Gabriel Metcalf
More than 130,000 rental units in San Francisco do not have parking spaces. If you happen to rent out one of these units, you know this situation is not the end of the world, for San Franciscans know what they’re getting into when they decide to live here. This city is one of the few truly urban places in the country where restaurants and stores are within easy walking distance, and parking is extremely scarce. The price of living where you can walk to the store or read the paper while you ride the bus or train to work is that sometimes you forego the conveniences of the suburbs, including easy parking. That’s life.
At the same time, we must be realistic and acknowledge that people sometimes need cars. There is really nothing more convenient than a car when you need to go grocery shopping, or have a picnic across the Golden Gate Bridge or pick up folks at the airport—each of these trips require walking too far or carrying heavy loads.
These two facts—limited space for cars, yet the occasional need for them—represent one of the great tensions of life in San Francisco. Quite simply, there isn’t room for everyone to own a vehicle, even though we sometimes need a car.
There is a solution, a way of letting people borrow a car for short periods of time, without owning it. It’s called car-sharing, and it has proven to be a very effective and inexpensive answer to your tenants’ parking needs.
In the spring of 2001, City CarShare was launched in San Francisco to provide people with a car on demand without the hassles or expense of ownership. The way City CarShare works is that members instantly reserve cars on the Internet, then walk to a nearby pod (a pod is any location where the CarShare vehicles are stored, including private and public parking garages) and drive off. They are billed at the end of the month, just as they would be for any utility, and they pay only for mileage and time, not for gas or insurance fees.
Launched as a pilot project two years ago, the program has grown at an incredible pace, beating its three-year projections in the first eight months. Today nearly 3,000 members share cars, and the program has expanded to Berkeley and Oakland. What began as a small experiment has quickly moved from a quirky alternative to a serious and accepted alternative to car ownership.
City CarShare’s Success Story
For many people the daily responsibility of owning, maintaining, insuring and parking a car has lost its allure. City CarShare offers them the best of both worlds by providing the use of a car whenever they want without the worry. At the same time, with access to a range of cars from small hybrid vehicles to big station wagons, CarShare is a major improvement over owning just one car. The program allows people to tailor the cars they drive to fit their needs for each specific trip.
Last, the price is a distinct advantage. Given that most costs for car ownership are fixed—from monthly payments to insurance (you pay them even if you don’t drive)—many people spend a lot of money even though the car just sits in the driveway most of the time. In contrast, City CarShare members pay a refundable deposit and a $10 per month membership fee. Based on how much they drive, they then pay $2-4/hour (depending on the time of day) and 44 cents a mile. People who drive less than 10,000 miles a year usually achieve significant savings by participating in this program.
Now that you know how City CarShare works, promote it with your tenants as a workable solution to their parking needs. You might also consider promoting it as a wise marketing strategy to prospective tenants. City CarShare is probably already in a neighborhood near your apartment building(s). If it’s not, it’s coming soon.
If You are Located Near a Pod:
- Consider including a City CarShare brochure in your marketing materials;
- Help tenants with the $300 deposit when signing or renewing a lease;
- Help tenants with the $10/month membership fee; or
- Add a pod onsite in your own building if you own a building with parking. (The size of your building will not matter if the pod is accessible to nontenants; however, if it is restricted to tenants only, the building should be fairly large. City CareShare has a $5 million dollar umbrella liability policy.)
The purpose of this transportation idea is to make driving an easier activity without the need to own and park a car. Those of you in the business of providing people with a place to live are likely to understand better than anyone the importance of finding a solution for the related problems of parking and transportation.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the SFAA or the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. For more information about City CarShare, visit citycarshare.org. Or, to make arrangements for your tenants, contact Annie Bourden, City CarShare’s Outreach Director (annie@citycarshare.org) or call 415-995-8588 x 306. Gabriel Metcalf is Deputy Director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association. He serves as the chairman of the board of directors of City CarShare. Copyright © 2004.