Sharing cars in Baltimore
by Lori Barrett | May 23, 2008 at 5:57 am
Posted in Uncategorized
The Baltimore Parking Authority is launching a nonprofit organization to start a car-sharing program.
Cars will be available throughout the city at low hourly rates and no membership fee. A similar program at Johns Hopkins University is already in place, operated by Flexcar, in which $6 per hour will not only buy you the car, but also gas, insurance, 150 free miles and 24-hour emergency service.
Could this be the solution to our overabundance of parking spaces? Probably not. But I am curious… will you consider ditching your car now that this service is available?
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May 23rd, 2008 at 1:35 pm | Please log in to reply. | Log in to rate this comment | report this comment
The cars at Johns Hopkins are actually operated by Zipcar now, since Flexcar no longer exists (it was taken over by Zipcar at the beginning of this year).
I lived car-free in DC before moving to Baltimore, and I used Zipcar frequently. It was a great service. Since moving to Baltimore, I've been hoping that a car-sharing service would expand into more neighborhoods.
While it is much more difficult to live car-free in Baltimore with its lackluster public transit, this sort of service could assist those that only regularly need one car, but might occassionaly need another.
I've always wondered how many homes in Canton, Fells Point, Federal Hill, etc. are two car households, and if the second car might not necessary be used on a daily basis. If those homes could give up the second car and use a car-share instead, it could actually free up some parking in these neighborhoods. It may or may not be a negligible amount, but it is something to help.