We Are Almost Zipsters!

There will be times throughout the year when we will want to travel by car.  Over the weekend, we signed-up for a Zipcar membership and are anticipating our first trip.  We live about 1.5 miles from a Zipcar location, which means that one of us will bike to the car and bring the car home for the rest of the family or simply continue from the Zipcar parking spot to run errands.

After doing the math ourselves, using a Zipcar a few hours per month is still cheaper than car ownership.  Our experience with Zipcar remains to be seen but we are optimistic.  The concept of "car sharing" feels right for our needs. See http://www.zipcar.com/ for more information.

We anticipate using a Zipcar for the following types of trips

• Monthly shopping excursions for bulky items - 40 pound sacks of wheat, oats, beans, toilet paper etc
• The ocasional family outing - 4 to 5 people wanting to go a little further than Ann Arbor
• Kayaking on the Huron River
• Large purchases for home repairs and improvements when a Home Depot truck is still too big
• There are 22 Zipcars available in Ann Arbor, including a Honda Insight hybrid. We are excited at the possibility of trying different cars for different types of trips. 

The benefits of a Zipcar from the Zipcar website:

• Each and every Zipcar takes 15-20 personally owned vehicles off the road.
• After joining Zipcar, 90% of members drive 5,500 miels or less per year.  That adds up to more than 32 million gallons of crude oil left in the ground.
• 10% of the population is expected to adopt car sharing as their primary mode of transportation.
• Zipcar members save more than $500 per month vs. car ownership.

Astrid