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| | It's time to share
Car 51 ? Where are you today?
Finding a cheaper
way for city driving
KEVIN
MCGRAN
TRANSPORTATION REPORTER
Hi.
I'm Car 51.
A 2004 Suzuki Aerio Fastback S-model hatchback. And,
boy, do I get around.
I belong to AutoShare, but don't get any smart ideas
about joining this club that gives you the freedom of having a
car at a fraction of the cost because I already do enough
work.
Take the last week of April, for example. I went all
over the place. Wal-Mart, The Bay, the in-laws, Guelph,
Scarborough. I racked up 655 kilometres on 11 different trips,
carrying stuff like hockey equipment, musical instruments,
while earning AutoShare $421.16 in fees.
AutoShare, now coming up on its sixth year of
operation, is big into this "car-sharing" business, where you
join and pay a fee to be able to borrow a car whenever you
want. They have 66 cars parked all over, with 1,250 members
who have taken this European idea and imported it to Toronto.
For the most part, if you live downtown and near the
subway, you're probably not too far from a Green P parking lot
where most of the shared cars are parked. I'm not going to
tell you where, or how you get my key. You have to be a member
to learn those secrets.
Now, if there's one thing I've learned from drivers;
it's that they don't know what the heck they're doing. They
say they only use me for errands like groceries, but they end
up using me a lot more.
Hey, they're inner-city folk. Annex people, used to
walking or biking or taking the TTC everywhere, so give them a
break.
When they get behind the wheel, they get that taste of
freedom. So who could blame them?
Like Ian Bell, for example.
He borrowed me April 23 at 5 p.m. Had me for the night.
He says he only needs me once or twice a month for errands,
but we must have been out three times that week.
On that night, we went all the way to Thornhill for
dinner with friends. He was getting married that week and had
to pick up his mother-in-law-to-be.
"I used to own a car," says Bell, who lived in
Dallas for awhile. "When I returned to Toronto for various
reasons it just didn't make sense to actually own a car.
Insurance was a big one. It's quite expensive to insure in
Toronto, and also the place where I'm living doesn't actually
have a parking spot.
"I had some friends who used AutoShare, so we decided
to sign up. We use it from time to time and we used it a great
deal last month because we were in the last stages of wedding
preparations ... On average, we use it once or twice a month,
if we have to go up to the suburbs, where you kind of need a
car."
Fess up Bell! You drive me a lot more than that.
"That Friday, in particular, we were going up to
visit Joyce's matron of honour, her husband and her
godparents. They live up just north of Steeles in Thornhill.
We decided the TTC was not really our best option for that
particular trip.
"We were travelling in rush hour. A cab would have been
quite expensive, even one way, when you think we would have
been standing in traffic for a good hour and a half. It was
Friday rush hour.
"We drove up and they put on a nice dinner of
Indonesian food."
The 53-kilometre trip and six-hour booking cost him
$44.91 (clients are never charged for gas, insurance or
maintenance). And he had me back in plenty of time for my next
trip: an 8:30 a.m. pickup by Caitlin Smith. She normally uses
me to pick up groceries. No more than 10 kilometres, max. But
this time she got lost.
We were all over the place. It wasn't her fault.
"This particular trip, my mother, who's new to
Toronto, asked me to drive her somewhere," says Smith.
"As it turned out, we never found the place. My mother
was taking some bridge lessons and she normally goes with
someone who drives. She gave me not the address of where it
happens, but the billing office of the school board. We arrive
at the place where she told me ... I asked her to tell me the
name of the place, I stopped at a phone booth and looked up
the address, and I don't know where that somewhere is.
"Because I had forgotten to take maps from my home,
because the AutoShare cars don't have maps in them, we stopped
at the store but the person there didn't know it. And then we
stopped a cop and it was the complete other side of the city.
We started to go there, but my mother said not to bother."
Sheesh. All that for nothing. Oh, well. The best of
intentions.
My favourite, though, is Jennie Rubio. She and her
husband are renovating their house.
Well, actually, he's renovating the house.
"I went to visit friends," says Rubio. "I often do
that sort of thing on weekends, clear the kids out of the
house and let my husband do the renovation."
That's okay by me. She takes me out on the highway,
away from all those stops and starts in the city. Down
Bathurst to the Lake Shore, to the QEW, to the 427, to the 401
to Highway 6 and, weeeee, we're in Guelph.
"We're just around the corner from a couple of cars,
so it's incredibly convenient. I'm a devotee of AutoShare. I
think we worked out it's about a 10th of the price, hugely
cheaper than owning a car. We wouldn't have anywhere to put a
car, anyway," says Rubio.
"I don't know why anybody wouldn't use AutoShare. If
you need your car every day, fine. But if you need it a couple
of days a week, then I think it's got a great alternative."
That was a 173-kilometre trip: $62.53 in total. My
week's biggest workout.
That was followed up by the shortest trip. Monday,
April 26, from 3 to 5 p.m. Five kilometres. $9.27. Alice Kent
has a baby, Ana, who's not even a year old yet. She started
driving me last year when she was pregnant.
With a baby, it's not quite as easy to walk. That day,
we went to Loblaws. But she's got a sweet deal. AutoShare
actually pays her $40 a month because she's got a parking spot
in her back alley.
"The car is parked right behind my house," says
Kent. "They pay us $40 a month to park it there because
parking is expensive and hard to come by in that area. It's
great. It's a total godsend. We use that car as many times as
we like, maybe three to five times a week for two hours, four
hours."
But there can be problems. Sometimes people forget to
put the key back.
"One time, I took the wrong car," says Kent. "When
you're online, sometimes you're not paying enough attention.
They tell you to print the sheet and take it with you. Humans
are dumb. I'm surprised how well it works with how stupid
people can be. If there's ever a problem, they send you in a
cab and pay for it."
Trudy Lipp took me for a 26-kilometre trip around
downtown on April 27 that cost her $33. I think she bought a
vacuum cleaner at Wal-Mart, or blinds at The Bay.
"I've had a car all my life and this is actually a
truly wonderful thing because it gives me as much freedom as I
need and it's within my budget," says Lipp.
And I carried Eyan Logan's upright bass and the
other members of his jazz trio to a gig at the Granite Club, a
19-kilometre trip that cost him $39.60.
"I need a car once in a while to do the occasional
gig. I play the upright bass. The subway is not a solution.
Renting a car is not feasible because it's too expensive."
Nadine Lavoie is fun. She's proof you can take the
girl out of Scarborough, but you can't get Scarborough out of
the girl. She works in the advertising industry and now lives
downtown. But on April 29 she borrowed me for the afternoon
and we went for a 39-kilometre trip that cost her $27.01.
"I'm used to having the freedom of going wherever
you need to go when you need to. It's something that's really
hard to let go," says Lavoie.
"One week after selling my car because I moved
downtown, I joined AutoShare. The first reason was knowing I
still had some freedom of getting a car whenever I need one,
without having to rely on friends for doing groceries.
"On that day, I went straight back to Scarborough. The
weather was wonderful so I thought I'd take the afternoon off
and go enjoy it. There were certain things I'd like to do, and
they were back in Scarborough, and I wouldn't go there unless
I have a car. So I thought, let's get the car and do some
errands.
"I went to one of my favourite restaurants that has the
rice that I really like. I was driving the car, window down,
with my favourite CD."
They weren't the only people who drove me that
week. There were others, but I'm sworn to secrecy. I can say
it had something to do with digital watches, dolphins, life,
the universe and the number 42.
Enough said.
For more about AutoShare, visit the Web site at http://www.autoshare.com/ or call
416-340-7888.
? Pay
less than $3 per week for 7 day home
delivery. |
