car2go Expands to Keep Up with Demand in Seattle

On March 18, 2013, the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to approve increasing the cap on car2go’s Seattle fleet, from 330 to 500 cars. The 500 leaves room to grow on — the fleet will likely add another 100 cars, to 430 total, as part of the concomitant expansion of car2go’s home area footprint (the area in which cars can be legally parked and left), on April 1.

Seattle has become one of car2go’s hottest North American spots, just three months after launch, making it easier for the Council to okay the point-to-point car-sharing newbie’s growth. For a one-time $35 membership fee, drivers can rent a car2go for just $0.38 per minute; GPS makes it possible for members to “see” where the cars are parked at any given moment and pick out the closest one.

Initially, Council proponent Tom Rasmussen had to lobby colleagues to allow the service. Mayoral candidate Bruce Harrell was quoted by PubliCola as worrying: “We’re putting more cars in the city and possibly clogging up [residential parking zones] where I will tell you, for a fact, that I don’t know how businesses will respond.” [Passive-aggressively, natch — ed.]

In a letter to the Council, car2go laid out the new home zone, spreading by 25 percent, to a total of 52 square miles, to include West and Southeast Seattle:

As seen in the map … we would like to include parts of West Seattle, including North Admiral, North Delridge, Alki, Seaview, High Point, and Fauntleroy Cove. The south boundary would be extended to Fauntleroy Way SW, SW Morgan Street, Sylvan Way SW, SW Orchard Street, Dumar Way SW, SW Holden Street, and Highland Park Way SW. The eastern boundary would be West Marginal Way SW, the West Seattle Bridge, and Harbor Ave SW. The home zone would expand all the way to Puget Sound to the West and North.

In South Seattle, car2go would like to expand to the Beacon Hill, Columbia City, and Georgetown neighborhoods, by pushing the southern boundary to S. Michigan Street and S. Orcas Street.

So far, the most common problem has been car2go drivers parking in zones where parking is limited by time of day (to open up lanes during rush hour, for instance). In that case, the Smart car is issued a ticket, which the driver must pay, along with a $25 fee from car2go. (If car2go has to move the vehicle, it’s $100 plus the ticket. A towed car2go is $150 plus the actual towing fee.) The cars must use permanent on-street parking of at least two-hours limit.

On the user-side, the most common complaint is the flow of all vehicles away from neighborhoods to downtown, leaving none behind until someone returns. That’s not unique to Seattle — you can watch it happen in this video of car2go dispersion in Calgary. This morning, the car2go system went down, leaving people unable to find cars at all, a new glitch for the list. But that’s why those 800,000 people in the U.S. who belong to a car-sharing service usually have multiple memberships; no one service does it all.

Car2go has just reshuffled the preprogrammed radio stations, too, after soliciting public feedback. The country station 94.1 KMPS is now no longer the default station you hear on start-up, and 90.3 KEXP has been added, according to Jonathan Zwickel.