In late 2008, the urbanized area signed its first car sharing contract with Zipcar. The program initially served the area with 6 vehicles in February 2009 and expanded to an average of 17.3 Zipcar vehicles in the urbanized area by 2015. In 2018, there were an average of 15.2 vehicles available at up to 10 locations.
According to the report, Greenhouse Gas Emission Impacts of Car Sharing in North America, each car share member reduces personal CO2 emissions by between 1,100 and 1,600 pounds per year. Car sharing programs have also been shown to reduce car ownership and roadway congestion.
The map below shows the locations of Zipcar vehicles that were present at the time of updating the LRTP 2040 report card. For the most current information on fleet availability, please refer to the Zipcar website.
The rider-booking service Uber launched in C-U in February 2015, followed by Lyft in 2016. The number of Zipcar vehicles and locations have decreased in response to competition from new services entering the urbanized area. Although both Uber and Lyft offer additional ridersharing options under uberPool and Lyft’s Shared rides, these options are currently unavailable to residents in the urbanized area. This performance measure receives a negative rating.