Why no shared cars in Detroit?

[English]

Like many things, this may happen eventually in Detroit.

[Ravine]

Like many things, this may happen eventually in Detroit.

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.

[fryar]

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.

[EastsideAl]

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.

[LodgeDodger]

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.

Hey now! Lodgedodger's getting jealous...