Municipal Car Sharing (WAS. . . you heard it here first!)

[jresta]

City to Join PhillyCarShare, Cut 400 Vehicles
Innovative Program First in North America

PHILADELPHIA, April 5, 2004 – The city that invented American government, cheese steaks, municipal sewers, and universities, today becomes the first major city in North America to start municipal car sharing. The City of Philadelphia announces today a pioneering partnership with PhillyCarShare to reduce the City’s fleet, improve air quality, and over time save millions of taxpayer dollars.

The innovative project, part of Mayor Street’s effort to trim $227 million from the City’s annual budget, targets the removal of roughly 400 municipal vehicles through 2005. Thirteen City departments are participating in the initial pilot, which kicks off today at the City’s Richmond fleet garage with inventory of the first 50+ sedans to be auctioned.
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All I can say is, "wow!" I heard they were working on this but i didn't know the deal was that close.

[Tranplanner]

Do you have a link at all? I'd love to hear more about how it's being set-up, etc. I'm doing a fair bit of work on car-sharing at the moment.

[jresta]

Do you have a link at all? I'd love to hear more about how it's being set-up, etc. I'm doing a fair bit of work on car-sharing at the moment.

http://www.phillycarshare.com

I don't have any info on how the deal with the city is working but I'm managing the TE grant they got last year. They're a non-profit and in order to pay for rolling out new cars they charge their members a $300 refundable deposit. This is obviously a barrier to low-income households so we're using the TE money to waive the cost of the deposit and they're tripling the size of their fleet in the process.

They already have a lot of cars around City Hall but i'd imagine they're going to need quite a few more. They prob. have an arrangement with the City where the city is using some of the money from the auctions as a deposit on the new cars.

If you check out the website they have all the info on how the technology works and all of the tech. aspects.

[JNA]

In our dept., we already have car sharing -
3 code enforcement people
and the rest of the dept also have to share the same car.

[jresta]

yeah, except, "gasp!" city employees will actually have to share a car with other city residents.