governors island? biking is prohibited there. is that supposed to change soon?

Will they also rent big ass chains and padlocks with these share bikes? Because if they don’t, within a month, half of these bikes are going to be painted black and parked in front of Chinese restaurants. How much do these Paris guys know about bike theft here?

F* Zipcar. It’s no better than Hertz or Avis and makes using a car cheaper for people who already don’t have a car. That means more driving. Zip’s Boston numbers about reducing car use dont mean squat here where far fewer people have cars.

I’m interested in seeing how the bike-share works out.

I use the Deutsche Bahn (German National Railroad) Call-A-Bike in Berlin and it’s quite convenient, but part of the “magic” is that you can leave the bike whereever you want, within the city-ring. You call in the location of where you lock the bike, and then it’s available for the next person.

Key points: the bikes are purpose-built (heavy-duty), and there are enough of them scattered around so that you can reasonably find one. And the technology that supports them ties it all together,

Hm, James. You may have been posting tongue-in-cheek, but I think that there are some people who would seriously believe this. I’ve been thinking about it all evening.

Zipcar is certainly not unambiguously a good thing, but any people who can be converted from car owners to Zipcar members are net pluses for the environment, because that’s one less car and one less parking space. Also, there’s less incentive to drive a Zipcar than a personal vehicle, because (a) the person doesn’t have as much invested and (b) the incremental costs are higher. In that way, it’s better than a personal car, but not as good for the streets as a traditional car rental service like Hertz.

Even in New York, many people will need a personal vehicle at some point in their lives, if only for a day. When my dad died and I needed to get his stuff over to my place, I rented an SUV. The goal is to get people to have the smallest investment and the highest incremental costs.

I’d love to think that every new Zipcar member is someone who’s just gotten rid of a car. The next best thing would be that the rest of them are people who would otherwise have bought a car (and possibly moved to the suburbs), but are staying in NYC and doing the majority of their travel without a car.

The people who would have done these trips by traditional rental or taxi aren’t much worse for the environment with Zipcar. The real minuses would be people who use Zipcar when they would otherwise have walked, cycled, used transit or gotten a delivery.

I’ll admit that I’ve gone purist on the alternative-fuel crowd, but I think the real danger is in seeing Zipcar (or electric vehicles) as a cure-all instead of as a means to an end. To the extent that Zipcar encourages people to avoid owning cars, it’s good. To the extent it encourages people to avoid transit (etc.), it’s bad. In other ways it’s indifferent.

With regards to Zipcar, my mother recently gave up her car for zipcar now that she’s retired and definitely uses Zipcar less than she would have used her private car. It’s probably reduced her auto usage by about 2/3 since she started using it last year. She’s moving to Boston next year and I’m sure she’ll use Zipcar there instead of buying a new car.

Now for the bikes. I know that everyone is going to say that people will deface and steal these bikes. This is why New York doesn’t have any quality civic infrastructure. For years all people talked about was how everything got destroyed or valdalized so we shouldn’t pay a dime to make nice what someone else will destroy. This is clearly not the case anymore. We need to get over the idea that this city can’t have nice things. We deserve to have the same quality of urban life that other cities have. I doubt that thieves and vandals are any more sophisticated here than they are in any major european capital. What we lack, and what makes these projects more difficult to acomplish is a sense of civic identity and purpose that is shared among New York’s citizens. I’m not saying people aren’t nice but rather that people are less likely to think of the city as a community to which they belong.

Just for the record, I’m a Zipcar user who would buy a car if this service was not available. It definitely cuts down the amount of mileage I’d be using if I opted for a car. Also, in my neighborhood, you can’t rent a Hertz car, pick it up at 7pm & return it at midnight.