City CarShare

San Francisco is famous for its scenic hills and breathtaking vistas but to its residents the city is just as infamous for its chronic shortage of parking spaces. Every day an average of 500,000 cars compete for an available 320,000 spaces.

“It’s ridiculous,” reflects John Walker, a San Francisco resident who says he is fed up with the city’s lack of parking spots, “I think that you can maybe have one good month of good parking karma, and then you pay for it with 3 months of parking hell.”

According to the American Automobile Association, the average California car owner spends more than $600 a month on their vehicle and transportation to cover such costs as maintenance, fuel, insurance and, of course, parking and related fees.

Yet despite these astounding costs, Californians are unlikely to give up the convenience and in many cases the necessity of using a car to run errands or simply “get away.”

Enter City Carshare, a fast-growing Bay Area non-profit that has reinvented the concept of car sharing to accommodate modern tastes by using some of today’s most advanced technologies.

“Cars were invented as a convenience and now we’ve kind of got it turned around, where cars make things more difficult,” notes Elizabeth Sullivan, the executive directory of City Carshare’s San Francisco office, “the idea behind car sharing is really, let’s put cars in their place.”

That mission starts with a guaranteed parking space. By enrolling as a member of City Carshare and paying an average of $60 a month, users can reserve a car online or by an automated telephone service, walk to a nearby parking garage and use an electronic key to gain access to their reserved vehicle. The insurance, the fuel costs and the parking are all paid for in the monthly fee. Because there is a $3.50 hourly cost for actual use of the vehicle, members only pay for as much as they need.

While carsharing was once popular in the United States during World War II, when it was seen as a patriotic duty to conserve on petroleum, it took the information age to bring it back into vogue in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a fleet of hip Volkswagen Jettas, station wagons and Beetles, the City Carshare member enjoys the niceties of new car ownership without the long-term commitment.

“Sometimes I get it because I have a specific task that I need to do that’s work related,” explains Oakland resident Adeeba Deterville, “and other times I get it just because I like cruising around in a cute little green Bug with a stereo that works really well.”

With over two dozen locations throughout San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and even Palo Alto, City Carshare hopes it can eventually reduce the number of vehicles in congested Bay Area streets. For now, it is concentrating on attracting new members and providing additional locations.