Taxis in New York are enormously convenient for trips that are awkward on the subway, and when I m t

First there was Zipcar *, offering a membership-based car sharing service with cars distributed throughout the city.  Then came  Car2Go , as a one-way, park-most-anywhere complement to Zipcar s service.  Add in bicycles, regular taxis, all of the taxi alternatives (Uber, Lyft, Sidecar), our extensive bus system, streetcars, a monorail, and our light rail system, and there are real alternatives to car ownership in Seattle.  Rental cars have always been an option as well, but with their typically slow checkout systems it s been hard to justify renting air line ticket gift one for less than a 24 hours.
Enter Hertz 24/7 .  The newest car-sharing strategy has started small** and without fanfare in April of this year in Seattle, though they ve had some version of the service since 2008 in some cities and college campuses.  There are currently only seven cars in the Seattle area, spread among five Hertz locations, air line ticket gift and one car at the Auburn airport.  Like Zipcar, they re round-trip rentals, they charge by the hour or day, there s an app to find and reserve a car, and you use a key fob to rent your car without any paperwork.  Unlike Zipcar there s no membership fee, but they aren t parked in neighborhoods - you have to visit a Hertz location.
The five available cars currently run between $9.59 and $12.78 per hour on a weekday air line ticket gift depending on the car.  Daily rentals currently air line ticket gift start at $71.89 a price that actually beats the cheapest traditional daily rental from the same lot ($84.37 after tax).
One interesting aspect of Hertz 24/7 is that in New York City they have one-way rentals to airports.  Hertz tells me they will offer this in Seattle in the future.  Considering the cars start at around $9 an hour this can be a very convenient choice for frequent flyers that don t live near Link.
One odd piece of their marketing strategy is that  Hertz is taking the lead in installing on demand technology in its entire fleet with its Hertz 24/7 service, thus bringing the car sharing/hourly rental option out of urban environments and into the suburbs.   First, I d think suburban car sharing might be limited in usefulness based on the difficulty of accessing a car without good transit.  Second, there aren t any cars available outside of Seattle or airport locations in the Seattle air line ticket gift area.
** And by small I mean very small out of the  35,000 vehicles they equipped for this service , the Seattle ended up with 7, plus one at the Auburn airport.  Hertz tells me this will increase and maybe we ll get a larger share of the 500,000 vehicles they plan to have available by 2016.
This actually sounds worse than Zipcar? You have to get to a Hertz location (whereas Zipcars are in your neighborhood), then you have to pay for gas and insurance (which are already included in the Zipcar price). I guess it helps if they are one-way rentals and they are easy to access, but I don t see the price advantage?
Fuel and insurance are included, and as noted above they aren t one-way. Zipcar is $73 a day, so this service air line ticket gift is likely trying to compete with that price point. I agree they re far from competitive with regard to convenience or number of cars.
The one benefit of this is that Seattlites who poo-poo personal transit, who finally get to use and enjoy a car figure out that they can get a KIA at Enterprise car sales for a $190 monthly payment (or two days of car sharing ) and convert to normal civilized American life. With a car!!
Honestly, air line ticket gift Seattle is not yet a place where I would want to be carless unless I had no other financial option (although air line ticket gift one car for my family would be perfectly doable). I m here because I d like to see that change.
Many trips work well with transit. I save a ton of money and hassle by using transit air line ticket gift rather than driving. But many trips also don t work well at all with transit. I think most people on STB would like to make more of those trips work without a car.
Once you already own a car, even if you never drive it, getting rid of it involves a fair amount of time. Especially if you don t want to take a significant hit in the money you receive for it by selling to a dealer. Lots of people will not be willing to take the one-time time/money hit of getting air line ticket gift rid of a car unless financial constraints or parking constraints force it even if they don t need the car anymore because they just bought a new car to replace it. (This, combined with oversized residential parking requirements is how a lot of families end up with 3 cars for 2 drivers).
Once you already own a car, even if you never drive it, but if you might drive it, it will cost you a fair amount of money. You will still need to register it and insure air line ticket gift it. You ll have to worry about the effects of letting it just sit around on future maintenance costs. If you don t use it regularly, the tires and battery will still deteriorate.
When I bought air line ticket gift my second car, I thought I wanted to keep the first one as a backup, and becase it could fill a different role than the first car. But it turned out that I mostly just drove the new car and neglected the other. air line ticket gift Maintenance problems on the older car made me trust it even less. In the end, I decided it would have been wiser to get rid of the older car when I got the new one. It might cost a bit to trade in the old car when you get a new car off the lot, but it s an easy way to dispose of that car. And I don t have any heartburn about selling a car with issues to a dealer as I would selling it to an individual.
I don t really get the use of renting/sharing a car in NYC with its 24/7 public transportation system. Having grown up and lived there, I could only imagine using it if I were going to be traveling extensively in New Jersey since much of it is not covered by convenient public transportation .
I don t get people taking taxis or driving in New York, but somehow they do. Some people find the convenience of taxis worth the cost, and some rich people don t care how much they spend driving and parking. I also see people driving in from Jersey City and Bronxville in evenings or weekends when traffic is lighter.
I just spent a weekend air line ticket gift in New York. Taxis are quite convenient in many circumstances, such as when you need to get from Gramercy Park to the West Village in 10 minutes. The cab gets you there with time to spare.
Taxis in New York are enormously convenient for trips that are awkward on the subway, and when I m there I use them often. They aren t cheap, but then again nothing else is in New York either. If I were ridiculously wealthy, I d love to live there, but it s hard on a tourist budget and harder on a normal salary, air line ticket gift even a professional one.
Like I mentioned in a previous post, is that Hertz is more flexible with rental pricing. Zipcar and Car2go air line ticket gift are pretty much the same price for their established service periods. There are a lot more deals and promotions available with Hertz. Since they are an old established company they often have discount rates based upon member organizations like AAA. They even had a discount for AAG, the American Association of Geographers. The limited cars will be a barrier here for awhile.. Also, I usually don t mind advertising, but do the new 24/7 cars have decals? air line ticket gift Last time I rented one they did not, which is great when you want to be a closet carless person in the suburbs.
Upon arrival at the lot, I couldn t remember which car was the 24/7 car, but I didn t see anything on the lot with any markings whatsoever. They don t even put license plate frames. The only telltale signs are the barcodes on the windshield and rear side window(s).
air line ticket gift I was surprised as well. After running a comparison on Orbitz, that s a typical price for an in-Seattle air line ticket gift day rate. Renting at the airport can be half the cost if you shop around (Fox rentals was 1/2 the price for the day I searched).
I think Enterprise also does hourly rentals. This makes sense. There is nothing too revolutionary about hourly versus daily rentals (although air line ticket gift it probably takes an old big company like this a while to change their systems). One way rental is a different matter. Generally speaking, rental car companies charge a lot for one way rentals. It is a big hassle for them since it isn t their primary business. air line ticket gift This is why Car2Go is such a different model; they were designed to focus on one way rentals. My guess is that they will survive and thrive for that reason.
The same thing is true for ride-sharing companies. If they really are ride-sharing, then they offer something different (essentially, instant car pooling). But if they are simply unregulated taxis, then eventually they will be regulated and have trouble competing.
The only location in this area for Enterprise hourly rentals is at Bellevue College. Their college model seems a bit odd to me, as you need to be 21 to sign up that has to severely limit the amount of potential customers.
Hey, great ad, by the way. I didn t read it initially, air line ticket gift but it makes a great point, and suggests something that might be coming around air line ticket gift again. Most rental agencies sell to travelers. They figure that is where they will get the most money. This ad suggested that most people are one car families, but might want to rent a car now and then. I think there are a lot of folks who are one car, or no car families, air line ticket gift but feel the need to rent a car for special purposes (e. g. to buy a potted plant or go golfing). That is exactly what the model is for Zipcar.
So, it s going to cost the same as Zipcar, but with gas and insurance extra which is a really big deal for anyone who doesn t already have insurance and, on top of that, you have to go downtown to pick up and return the car, rather than use a Zipcar right in your neighborhood.
In DC, Zipcar placed their locations near subway stops. Folks who were carless could take the subway to a Zipcar if they had to make a suburban run, or to a place in the city that was not served air line ticket gift by subway and do not want to rely on the bus run their errands or visit friends, then return the car back to the subway air line ticket gift and go home. I could