Why no shared cars in Detroit?

Disclaimer: The below, my first post on this forum, sounds like so much kvetsching, so let me just state that I am contemplating coming back to the D, and so am not just slamming the city for not being as suave & cool as some other cities.

I have always wondered why Detroit does not have any shared car services. Ann Arbor not only has ZipCar, it also has a coop or two, and some kind of an outfit that's backed by UHaul, if I remember correctly. I totally get that much of the city is not so dense that car sharing makes so much sense that it is just screaming you in the face [[although it has residents who are struggling financially and could stand to benefit). But what about downtown and midtown? All those people living and working there need their own car? WSU, GM, the government, and Detroit's other functioning businesses and institutions surely don't maintain fleets of cars for employee use on short trips around the area, right? :rolleyes:

I lived in Cadillac Square in Downtown Detroit, up until 2 years ago, and the expense of parking was a major PITA. All those people in Cadillac Square, the Lofts at Woodward Center, Millender, Trolley Plaza/Washington Square, they all need to pay $150/month in order to park their car during the week as they walk to work at Campus Martius or the Renaissance Center? That's just to get in the game; for the privilege of being able to drive out to necessary shopping on a Saturday afternoon. It just doesn't make sense to me, and it was a total frustration at the time I lived there [[one of those dangit, this place could be so much more than it is things).

Anybody have any thoughts on why this is not in place already, or what I failed to see when I still [[briefly) lived there? Whatever happened to Via Car, which apparently went under shortly before I got there?

<ok, I gave it away, I lived there from 2005-2008>

Because 99.9999% of the people who would patronize a car share service in Detroit already own their own cars out of necessity.

At one time metro Detroit had the most cars per household than any other metro area in the US - don't know if that's still true or not.

Car shares are just really short-term car rentals and car rentals around here aren't all that expensive if one shops around and takes advantage of available programs.

Does anyone know what happened to this Detroit car sharing service from 2005?

http://carsharingus.blogspot.com/200...vice-uses.html

Because all the shared cars would be treated like crap in D....just saying noticing the general condition of things.

I'm a subscriber here in Chicago. To be honest, I don't like it, and I've not been happy with the general condition of cars, but my options are either pay $380/month for a parking space I'm not even guaranteed, or buy my own parking spot flat out for $35,000. That's why car sharing is needed in some place and not others. Just buy a car in Detroit and pay the 150 whatever.

The questioner is mistaking the lack of a formal service for the lack of a service. People decided to share my cars a couple of times.

Like many things, this may happen eventually in Detroit.

I thought car 'sharing' was quite common in the area. They don't always come back in one piece though.

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Originally Posted by English

Like many things, this may happen eventually in Detroit.

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The hell you say, Little Missy. Are you suggesting that the Lions may eventually make it to the Super Bowl?

Just toying with you, and you can share my car with me. I hear that you're easy on the eyes, and sharing my four-wheeled disgrace will keep your ass off of that damned People Mover.

Let me clarify: I'm probably not talking about like 90% of the city here, but the functional business core bordered by the river, the Lodge, I75 and I375, and then up the Woodward corridor to New Center. Detroit's financial hopes are centered on these two clusters of economic activity, and the hope is that public transportation initiatives like the M-1 rail and that "commuter rail" line out to Ann Arbor will catalyze this economic activity [[such as there is) further, and out into additional parts of Detroit. A central theme with all of this is this concept that you have got to have walkable spaces where people will enjoy spending their leisure time. Or am I seeing things? I mean, I'm not making this up, right? This is clearly either the vision, or one of a number of competing visions, about how to keep the lights on in Detroit, right?

If I am not wrong, whose bright idea was it to promote this vision of yuppie-chic loft residences and not see to it that there would be a Zipcar? It's just a basic piece of the proposition. It wouldn't necessarily have to be Zipcar of course, but a car share in general.

The heart of my argument is that a car share is an integral part of the whole new urban vision that it seems to me is being implemented. I mean, they think they're gonna get 15,000 millenials to live in Detroit by 2015 without a car share? Because yeah, sure, everything here is by your definition a little crummier and more expensive than in your leafy suburb, every-one-I-know, and I have no counter to your definition, no paradigm shift, no 21st century anything to take any pride in and undermine the basis of the point of view from which everyone-I-know's skepticism is drawn, namely that's it is super-awesome to drive everywhere, and not a dead-end approach to setting up a community. But I will nonetheless move here, as one of the desired upwardly mobile educated members of the creative class.

Isn't it obvious? Needs a car share to work. The car share won't be what makes it work, but its absence will be what keeps it from working. Even if you embrace Detroit's buses and the M-1 when it is extended, and go to the artsy movie house in Royal Oak that way [[hey, at least this way, you can drink afterward, a real advantage to public transportation), you need to have that option to drive out to Canton and go to Ikea once in a blue moon.

Needs a car share.

There isn't anywhere near enough population here, even in that central core, to make such a business workable in Detroit. Especially since most people who come from around these parts originally, given our local traditions, would much rather own and operate their own cars. Most of those who do not own cars in Detroit aren't yuppies, but rather the very poor and often the elderly [[like the people on the north side discussed in the post above), who definitely should have better transportation options, but are not really a market for a pricey car rental service.

To make something like that work you really need to have a more densely populated and wealthier city, where keeping and parking a car is much more of an expense/hassle [[believe it or not, $150/month is very low compared to most big cities in the country), and where traditionally lots of adults don't own cars or drive regularly. In the U.S. that describes most east coast cites, as well as Chicago, S.F., and some others, but certainly not Detroit.

EastsideAl, I went to college and lived in New York, I am definitely familiar with a city being set up that way. But look at the whole entire picture. Parking, insurance and the car payment on my $8,800 car that I moved to Detroit with added up to just over $500 per month. That's basically as much as my whole apartment. Meanwhile, I am pretty closely related to those guys that were supposed to rent the lofts at Merchant Row and so on, I'm reasonably well educated and successful and so on. I'm just too cheap to do that myself. But why would you do that and then submit yourself to the idiocy of all of these payments so the car can sit in glorified storage all week as you walk to work, to restaurants and to bars. If you're that person, don't you have a decent car that's gonna cost you a lot?

So you ditch the car, take the bus up Gratiot to Eastern Market, up Woodward to Aldi or that other supermarket, there could even be a reasonable bus connection to that Kroeger on I375 for all I know. And once in a while, you go to Target or the Ford Wyoming Drive In. Reasonable [[not penny pinching) usage costs you, say, $180 per month. All those savings, plus somewhere somehow the "machine" takes care of washing the car, filling it up with gas, oil changes, and it's a nice statusy car as well.

Actually there is a lot of car sharing that goes on here. It is not formalized like a business proposition however.

My personal car has been on loan to a friend for 2 1/2 months since we don't need it. Public transportation is not an option for him since he lives in Detroit and works in a far Burb.

Fryar, it is part of the Detroit culture. Perhaps it is simply not for you.

How many hours per month do you plan to budget? Remember, if you exceed the amount, your costs begin to add up. Car sharing is for the occasional user. A trip to the grocery store once a week, and maybe a drive out to the suburbs.

It's still somewhat of a novelty here in Chicago and back when I lived in Ann Arbor. I just can't imagine it in Detroit, I'd feel I'd have to own a car unless I had no money.

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Originally Posted by fryar

But look at the whole entire picture. Parking, insurance and the car payment on my $8,800 car that I moved to Detroit with added up to just over $500 per month. That's basically as much as my whole apartment.

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Well, now, it's all about your choices, isn't it?

For me:
car - $1,600 cash [[no payments)
insurance - $50/month [[no collision)
parking - free on the street - typically under $10/month at the occasional meters when out and about

Detroit's greatest lesson - you don't need a lot to live, but if it's image driven conspicuous consumer status you seek you need to be stupid enough to pay for it...

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Originally Posted by Ravine

The hell you say, Little Missy. Are you suggesting that the Lions may eventually make it to the Super Bowl?

Just toying with you, and you can share my car with me. I hear that you're easy on the eyes, and sharing my four-wheeled disgrace will keep your ass off of that damned People Mover.

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Hey now! Lodgedodger's getting jealous...

Ravine & Lodgedodger, you're both hilarious! :) I don't even know of anyone who uses the ZipCars in Ann Arbor. Even most students over 21 have their own car.

Lilpup's got the right idea. I'll be in the car market this winter, and think that I'll buy used in order to deal with the insurance when I move back to the D.... but if I could only get over my addiction to the scent of a new car! What's in that stuff, anyway?

Lilpup, I'm with you all the way on that. I ended up trading that car with the loan to a coworker, and taking her 1999 Saturn with 100k+ miles on it off her hands. $50 per month in insurance now that I did not have a loan, which in turn required me to have comprehensive and collision insurance per the loan terms.

I had had a 12 year old car with a big dent in the fender prior to that car. The only reason I even bought it was that I figured I would likely end up needing a reliable car in Detroit for work, that this was one issue I would not want to mess with. However, turned out I ended up living 2 blocks from work, and had precisely the driving pattern Wolverine described above.

Going north on Woodward from Campus Martius, those first couple of blocks are definitely trying to be more upscale and trendy, which seems to me would necessitate a trendier car than an old beater. But for my own purposes, the old beater approach is more than adequate.

Ann Arbor is not the first place I would think of as the kind of dense city-type location in which space is at a premium, and so a car share does not makes so much sense at first glance, except for very few, isolated exceptions. This equation could change, however, if UoM participated in the car share in place of administering its own fleet.

Zipcars are huge with the students in Ann Arbor. The fleet is based on the University's North Campus.

Most undergrads and a lot of the foreign students don't have their own cars in Ann Arbor and available Zipcars, or even traditional rental cars, are hard to find during any holiday student exodus.

Thank you, Lilpup.
Do you happen to know if UoM is a member in ZipCar Ann Arbor, and has eliminated some or all of its fleet in favor of car sharing?

Look at it this way, how many big name car rental places do you know of in Detroit such as Avis, Alamo, Hertz Etc?

If im not mistaken, they are all located out by the airport!

Part of my business is renting U-hauls, and if you ever take notice you will realize that all the crappy trucks are in Detroit and all the nice new shiny trucks are out in the suburbs. Did you know U-haul rents cargo vans and pick up trucks? You can only get them in the suburbs and not in the inner city.

For some reason, the people who rent the trucks in the city tend to put more wear and tear on them when used in the city.

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Originally Posted by fryar

Thank you, Lilpup.
Do you happen to know if UoM is a member in ZipCar Ann Arbor, and has eliminated some or all of its fleet in favor of car sharing?

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I don't know if U-M is a member but I doubt it. They essentially run their own car sharing program for university related activities with their own fleet.

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Originally Posted by CLAUDE G

Look at it this way, how many big name car rental places do you know of in Detroit such as Avis, Alamo, Hertz Etc?

If im not mistaken, they are all located out by the airport!

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I know there are a few neighborhood locations out Woodward. Hertz has a place north of Nine Mile and there's another agency [[Avis? Enterprise?) out around 13 or 14 Mile.

One thing to remember with all these agencies - far and away most of them require a credit card in the renter's name be presented and that the renter be a legally licensed driver.

You are mistaken. Google 'car rental Detroit,' and you'll see several name-brand outlets in the CBD and Midtown.

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Originally Posted by CLAUDE G

Look at it this way, how many big name car rental places do you know of in Detroit such as Avis, Alamo, Hertz Etc?

If im not mistaken, they are all located out by the airport!

Part of my business is renting U-hauls, and if you ever take notice you will realize that all the crappy trucks are in Detroit and all the nice new shiny trucks are out in the suburbs. Did you know U-haul rents cargo vans and pick up trucks? You can only get them in the suburbs and not in the inner city.

For some reason, the people who rent the trucks in the city tend to put more wear and tear on them when used in the city.

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Originally Posted by CLAUDE G

Look at it this way, how many big name car rental places do you know of in Detroit such as Avis, Alamo, Hertz Etc?

If im not mistaken, they are all located out by the airport!

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There is an Enterprise car rental lot at Grand River and Archdale on the northwest side of the city. There is also another Enterprise lot on E. Jefferson, I believe near St. Aubin. There are also several rental car counters at the hotels downtown.

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Originally Posted by Huggybear

You are mistaken. Google 'car rental Detroit,' and you'll see several name-brand outlets in the CBD and Midtown.

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I used the Enterprise in New Center regularly when I lived in Midtown.

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Originally Posted by lilpup

Zipcars are huge with the students in Ann Arbor. The fleet is based on the University's North Campus.

Most undergrads and a lot of the foreign students don't have their own cars in Ann Arbor and available Zipcars, or even traditional rental cars, are hard to find during any holiday student exodus.

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I drive around Ann Arbor on a daily basis. I just don't see a lot of ZipCars around. Are they just used for out-of-town trips?

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Originally Posted by English

I drive around Ann Arbor on a daily basis. I just don't see a lot of ZipCars around. Are they just used for out-of-town trips?

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You see them in downtown AA from time to time, where the city Zipcars are housed. The spaces where they're parked are vacant more often than not. The ones on campus are probably used mostly to get out of town, since there are cheaper ways to get around. AFAIK the campus cars are not in any way part of the U-M fleet, but there is some kind of special arrangement with the university with those -- if you sign up, you have to specify whether you're affiliated with the university.

I think they could work in Detroit downtown in the vicinity of the high-rises. Wouldn't be surprised to see it happen.

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Originally Posted by English

I drive around Ann Arbor on a daily basis. I just don't see a lot of ZipCars around. Are they just used for out-of-town trips?

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I saw several Zip Cars when I was in Ann Arbor about three weeks ago. I would assume that most people use them to go for grocery runs, or to take care of other errands where the public transit system would be inconvenient [[or unable to accommodate). They could also be used to pick up friends from the airport, make quick day trips to visit relatives [[for students who are from the area), etc.

^ That must be it. I don't live anywhere near the campus areas, but nearer Ypsi, where rents are cheap.

All my grad student friends either own a car or take the AATA bus. You can't afford to rent a car on $15-20K a year. The bus system here is excellent. But of course, I don't know what the undergrads are doing in their spare time. Very interesting info, thanks for the heads-up.

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Originally Posted by English

I don't know what the undergrads are doing in their spare time.

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They walk to things. Like movie theaters, restaurants, cafes, museums, clubs, bars, and retail. All within 10-15 minutes of any dorm or student hood. Not sure what you'd do in your spare time in the burbs. But that's just my opinion...and well...95% of undergraduates' opinions as well..

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Originally Posted by English

^ That must be it. I don't live anywhere near the campus areas, but nearer Ypsi, where rents are cheap.

All my grad student friends either own a car or take the AATA bus. You can't afford to rent a car on $15-20K a year. The bus system here is excellent. But of course, I don't know what the undergrads are doing in their spare time. Very interesting info, thanks for the heads-up.

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Well, Zip Car leaves the cars in lots and structures in or near the University of Michigan's campus, so the biggest reason that people who live near Ypsi probably don't use them as much is lack of access. I would scan the parking lots at Meijer or Target the next time you go shopping. You'll probably see one or two parked out there.

Zip Car is a much cheaper alternative to owning a car, if you only need to drive infrequently, since you can rent them by the hour. You also aren't responsible for filling the gas tank or insuring it, which isn't the case with a traditional rental car.

When I lived in Ann Arbor, I owned a car but could very well have lived without it. I would usually only drive it the mile from where I lived to the student parking lot, and leave it parked there all day. I would either walk or use the university bus system to travel around campus. Every two weeks or so I might have made a trip to Meijer for a grocery run, which I could have used the ZipCar to do at a much cheaper cost than owning my own car.

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Originally Posted by wolverine

They walk to things. Like movie theaters, restaurants, cafes, museums, clubs, bars, and retail. All within 10-15 minutes of any dorm or student hood. Not sure what you'd do in your spare time in the burbs. But that's just my opinion...and well...95% of undergraduates' opinions as well..

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Yep, that's how my grad student friends who live in Kerrytown or the Old West Side live as well. They rarely move their cars.

I think the only places to have that kind of lifestyle in the region are Ann Arbor, Ferndale, Royal Oak, and now [[for most things) Midtown Detroit. Given what I've learned on this thread about people using them, I could see ZipCars succeeding there.

Definitely. Not to mention Kerrytown had difficult to find parking. It seemed if you moved your car, you were stuck searching for a space for over an hour.

In another thread, the following was posted in a completely unrelated context with regard to my complaint that, while living and working downtown, my car insurance did not take into account that I rarely drove:

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Originally Posted by Det_ard

For someone like you that rarely drives it would be nice if there were a policy that was based on verifiable mileage driven. Actually, I've heard something about that recently but I don't know if it exists around here.

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In Michigan, the closest you can come that I know of is the Progressive "Snapshot", where a modified Davis Car Chip is attached to your OBD II port. As you drive, it periodically sends updates to the progressive server about your driving habits via the cell phone network - how much you drive, what time of day you drive, how fast you drive, how often you have "hard brakes", stuff like that. If you never brake hard, never slip over 75 MPH, never drive during periods when accidents are more likely to occur [[they send you a chart), etc etc, you can save up to 25% off your premium.

Right up my alley by virtue of taking advantage of not being, in actuality, in the paper, pencil and slide rule era, and actually taking advantage of the data crunching power of computers in order to determine my rate based on details actually relevant to ascertaining the risk I present. The drivers around me play into that, of course, but traditional methods overweight them because, let's face it, my ZIP Code is a poor proxy at best.

Worth noting: Progressive *claims*, at least, that they do not do GPS tracking, have a secret webcam on the device, etc. I see no reason to disbelieve them. Outside of Michigan, Snapshot is available in some other states as well, but not all, I believe.

In Texas, the very progressive MileMeter insurance program does charge you by the mile. They had to get the legislature to pass something called the "cents-per-mile choice law" to make this possible. That's right, antiquated legislation from ancient times actually got in the way of using computers to do things smarter and better. Facepalm, anyone?

Similarly, California is pretty unique in updating its legislation to permit insurance companies no-brainers made possible through the miracle of computing, namely P2P car sharing. A few other states, Massachusetts and Oregon among them, have similar laws on the books or in consideration, but it's far from normal. Traditional legislation apparently leaves unanswered the question of insurance coverage in situations where a car owner permits a licensed driver to rent their car on an hourly basis while the owner is not going to use it [[during the workday, say). Under the new CA law, which went into effect January 1 2011, it is possible to engage a middleman website on which both parties register and which handles things like scheduling. A portion of the fee paid by the borrower covers the hourly insurance, and a portion goes to the car's owner.

This seems, on the surface, like a very easy way to address inefficient land use in dense environments due to the walkability's competiton for land with "slummy" surface lots, etc. etc., that whole bag. Creates something akin to infrastructure that makes the rehabilitation of abandoned structures without attached parking into residential units a little more viable.

You'll get some people who will do this, and presto, instant infrastructure.

Seeing how high insurance costs are for personal vehicles, I can imagine that insurance on a shared car would be somewhere in the ballpark of $384,000 annually.

That would indeed be prohibitive. Hopefully, that's unrealistic. ;-)

Also, in rebuttal ;-), seeing as how little time people actually spend in their cars, most of the hundreds of dollars some people are throwing at their cars every month are being spent to not drive the thing, but for it to just exist and take up space, so there's some kind of clever line about waste I could try to put together.

If insurance basically doubles in a fleet situation, say, that's significantly more expensive insurance. But you have to weigh that against the additional fixed cost of renting your own parking space and making your own car payment instead of paying your share of a collective cost.

It would be helpful if the insurance could be broken down by mile driven or hour spent in the car, which is no longer administratively burdensome.

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Originally Posted by fryar

In Michigan, the closest you can come that I know of is the Progressive "Snapshot", where a modified Davis Car Chip is attached to your OBD II port. As you drive, it periodically sends updates to the progressive server about your driving habits via the cell phone network - how much you drive, what time of day you drive, how fast you drive, how often you have "hard brakes", stuff like that. If you never brake hard, never slip over 75 MPH, never drive during periods when accidents are more likely to occur [[they send you a chart), etc etc, you can save up to 25% off your premium.
.

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Just a word of caution if you decide to use this; I used to use it and it damaged some wiring in my car [['08 Cobalt). The gas gauge needle was freaking out, the heater fan was stopping then running full blast..Thank God it was still under warranty. The dealership directly attributed it to using this device.

I have a good source who knows that Zipcars will be in Midtown by next year.

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Originally Posted by Roq

Just a word of caution if you decide to use this; I used to use it and it damaged some wiring in my car [['08 Cobalt). The gas gauge needle was freaking out, the heater fan was stopping then running full blast..Thank God it was still under warranty. The dealership directly attributed it to using this device.

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I appreciate the warning, but I used it in MI and DC, and in both places, it worked fine and did not interfere with anything. Isn't that what the ODB is there for in the first place, as a communication port that talks to electronic device.

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Originally Posted by j to the jeremy

I have a good source who knows that Zipcars will be in Midtown by next year.

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My job is done here. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by j to the jeremy

I have a good source who knows that Zipcars will be in Midtown by next year.

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They don't usually have a lot of - scratch that - they often don't have any US makes at their locations. Somebody's in for a rude awakening.