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TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

October 2001

Car Sharing Program Moves Into Fast Lane

Carshare vehicleWhat's lime green, shiny and multiplying like crazy? If you answered City CarShare's fleet of Volkswagen New Beetles, you're right. The cars have been buzzing around San Francisco since this past March and the program has proven so popular that City CarShare will expand into Oakland next month and Berkeley in January 2002.

"It's going so well," said City CarShare Board Chairman Gabriel Metcalf, "that after six months, we already have over 800 people in the program in San Francisco alone. That's way beyond our one-year goal of having 500-600 members."

The idea behind car sharing is simple: to make cars available to people on a per-use basis. "The goal is to provide a better alternative than private auto ownership," Metcalf explained. Participants pay a $10 monthly membership fee plus a $2.50 hourly charge (capped at $25 per 24-hour period) and 45 cents per mile.

City CarShare currently has some 30 cars at 11 locations in San Francisco -- mostly lime green New Beetles -- and is adding vehicles at a pace of about one a week. The $130,000 contract with the city of Oakland will allow City CarShare to deploy 10 cars in the first year. The organization expects its $55,000 contract with the city of Berkeley to finance the acquisition of five cars in the first year.

City CarShare is a nonprofit organization started by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association , the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and Urban Ecology.

For more information, contact City CarShare at 415.995.8588 or, in the East Bay, at 510.352.0323, or visit the Web site: www.citycarshare.org.

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