Legislature exempts HOURCAR members from 5% fee

Members of car sharing organizations across the country have to pay rental car taxes – in Minnesota it is a 6.2 % tax. At HOURCAR, we have always found this really irritating. Legislators know that most rental car usage comes from people visiting from outside the state border. So, states enact rental car taxes as a way of “exporting” taxes to people that don’t vote in their state, whereas, car sharing organizations are made up of local people who reduce their impact on the environment by walking, biking and taking transit for many of their daily trips. Just the kind of impact that the state intended when it set carbon reduction goals.

It gets worse. When a rental car company has more than 20 cars, they have to charge an additional 5% fee on top of the sales taxes and rental car tax. This past winter, we realized our hopes of expanding would have meant charging our members this additional fee. Thankfully, we found some state legislators who recognized that adding another 5% fee to our members’ bills would not be fair. So, this year, as part of the one non-controversial tax bill to be signed into law, HOURCAR was officially exempt from the 5% fee. We recently received word from the Department of Revenue that the change is official so we will not have to institute the charge.

Several of the legislators told us that they would like to exempt car sharing from the entire rental car tax – including the 6.2 % our members already pay – but unfortunately, in this impossible budget year, they would not have been able to move a bill that would reduce current state tax collections.

We wanted to take this opportunity to thank the legislators who worked to make this happen.

Our chief authors, Rep. Jim Davnie and Sen. John Marty carried the bill through committee and dogged it to the very end. Sen. Scott Dibble, a co-author, ensured that it made it through a Tax conference committee and onto the Senate Floor. These three legislators made certain that the HOURCAR provision was eventually rolled into the one tax policy bill with the noncontroversial items, so that it would be signed into law.

Also deserving our appreciation are the two chairs of the Tax committees, Sen. Tom Bakk and Rep. Ann Lenczewski who included the provision in their omnibus tax bills. Several other legislators, by co-authoring the bill or working behind the scenes, helped along the way, including Sen. Larry Pogemiller, Rep. Frank Hornstein, Rep. Melissa Hortman and Rep. Erin Murphy. HOURCAR thanks all the legislators who voted for the final package and Governor Pawlenty for signing it. Also, we thank the people at the Department of Revenue for confirming that HOURCAR members are now exempt from the 5% fee.

There is a growing understanding of what our members are doing. We expected the same kind of confusion about car sharing that HOURCAR staff first experienced when they took this issue to the legislature. But, four years later, people are beginning to understand car sharing and the contribution that our members are making to the environment.

Oh, the places you will go: Chicago

The Windy City. Second City. The City of Big Shoulders.

Whatever you call it, it's the closest big city to Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and even though the El runs all night and the buses generally come every ten minutes, you might need a car while you're there, right?
(Okay, maybe not. Traffic is atrocious and parking is a nightmare. But that's why shared cars have reserved parking spots)

In any case, if you do need a car, our friends at I-Go are there for you. Give us a shout in advance, and we can set the whole thing up for you. I-Go's offices are right off the El in Wicker Park if you need to pick up a key card (which can also be mailed to you in advance), and with about 200 cars, there's many for you to choose.

So if you plan to go down to Chicago, you car can be waiting for you there, too.

Oh, the places you will go: San Francisco

Are you going to San Francisco? In addition to wearing flowers in your hair (a reference to a very old song), did you know that you can share cars there, too?

That's right, in the City by the Bay. Also in Mad City (Madison), the cities of Big Shoulders and Brotherly Love (Chicago and Philly), the Mile-High City (Denver), by the Gorges (Ithaca), the Queen City (Toronto), and others, even Down Under. It's part of the reciprocal memberships offered as part of your HOURCAR membership. Let us know in advance and we'll contact the car sharing organization in the city to which you are traveling, and we'll set you up to drive there without having to pay sign-up costs for their program.

(Do note, qualifications may vary for different programs, and we need to know at least a week beforehand to get you on your way.)

An HOURCAR staff member recently was in San Francisco and, camera in tow, dropped by to see the local car sharing service, City Car Share (Locals there refer to San Francisco as "the City") and the sights as well, including a genuine Twin Cities Rapid Transit Streetcar on Market Street.

And if you go anywhere and share cars, send us your stories and photos and we'll be glad to post them. Or post them yourself at the HOURCAR Facebook page.

The green roof at the new Academy of Sciences Museum; you can walk up on to it and gaze off at the hills around.

A butterfly in the museum's great rainforest exhibit.

Sporting the HOURCAR t-shirt in a City Car Share parking spot. (The car was out.)

The view from under the Bay Bridge, where it was sunny.

A red Fit in the CityCarShare fleet.

Smart planning and smart savings ($9400!)

Here are two sweet articles which have crossed our desk.

First, you all might want to drive the HOURCAR more since, according to the American Public Transit Association, you're saving money versus owning a car. A lot of money. I mean, we knew that you'd save, but $9407 a year? Wow. Yeah, if you drive a long distance and pay $200 a month for parking, it will cost.

$9407 is a lot of money. It's a pretty sweet vacation. Or three. It's $180 a week, twenty-six bucks a day. According to APTA, you could drive the HOURCAR three or four times a day and still come out ahead. That's a pretty damn good deal.

******

Second, from the Times comes a story about car-free suburbs in Germany. We like good development, and we like car-free.

Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.

That's pretty cool. If you make car ownership difficult and expensive, people will turn to cleaner, greener options.

As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here.

Hey, this is about the same proportions as the HOURCAR membership base.

“When I had a car I was always tense. I’m much happier this way,” said Heidrun Walter, a media trainer and mother of two, as she walked verdant streets where the swish of bicycles and the chatter of wandering children drown out the occasional distant motor.

Now, if only we could have Minneapolis sound the same way (you know, other than the Greenway).

Vauban, home to 5,500 residents within a rectangular square mile, may be the most advanced experiment in low-car suburban life.

And, maybe, we can get there. Minneapolis's population density is 6,700 and Saint Paul's is 5,400. Not the highest around (66,000 in Manhattan) but not bad.

For trips to stores like Ikea or the ski slopes, families buy cars together or use communal cars rented out by Vauban’s car-sharing club.

And, yes, they do have car sharing (of course!).

Wave of the future, folks, wave of the future!

A friendly reminder

When it is snowing out like it is today, you are more than welcome to cancel reservations, and we'll waive any charges. Just call our office or shoot us an email or leave us some member feedback and we'll waive any cancellation or canceled time fees.

Your safety is our top priority!

When you ride alone …

Back during World War II, it meant something to ride alone. If you drove without someone else in the car, or drove when you could instead ride the streetcar (yes, World War II saw the peak ridership for most streetcar systems, including the one in the Twin Cities), you were unpatriotic. Why? Because you were using precious resources like fuel and rubber which were better suited for the war effort.

Back then, the US Government, actually asked for collective sacrifice for the greater good. We were told that we should conserve resources, grow our own food, and recycle. In fact, the Dowling Community Garden in Minneapolis has been an active garden since World War II, the last community vegetable garden in the country from the war.

(There are a whole bunch of World War II propaganda posters online, here's a good compilation.)

In any case there was a recent spat, covered by the Star Tribune, at the state legislature, concerning just this poster:

During a presentation Tuesday related to a bill to reduce carbon emissions and the number of miles vehicles in Minnesota are driven, Dr. Julian Marshall of the University of Minnesota displayed a digital slide containing two versions of the historic ad.

The original ad is an illustration of a man driving a convertible and bears the slogan "When you ride ALONE, you ride with Hitler! Join a car-sharing club TODAY!" -- the idea being that a failure to conserve resources was aiding the German dictator, who was shown riding in the passenger seat.

The parody replaced Hitler with Osama bin Laden, a reference to oil-producing countries with ties to terrorism. It came from the cover of a 2002 book by the comedian Bill Maher, which was titled, "When You Ride Alone, You Ride with bin Laden: What the Government Should Be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism."

Maher's poster came out a few years ago, and the point he makes is that by consuming fuel we are funding the countries which sponsor terrorism. Or, as Marshall (a professor of Civil Engineering at the U) said:

"It's no secret that money spent on gasoline goes to places that are not very happy with us," Marshall said. "The issues we're talking about are all interconnected -- climate change, transportation, energy, geopolitics, climate security, energy security."

Marshall said he only meant to "provoke discussion about the effects of the state's transportation system." Of course, there were some other propaganda posters put out by the Federal Government during World War II. Each of them asked Americans to do something which would be patriotic, and help the country. One of them asked us to, well, just take a look:



Ah, yes, not only does car sharing save you money and help the environment, but it once was (and, perhaps, still is) the patriotic thing to do.

Walkers and bikers are fitter

A story titled "Leaner nations bike, walk, use mass transit" crossed our desk last month. We looked at the data for Latvia, Sweden and the Netherlands, where at least 50% of commuters walk, bike or take transit to work, and where obesity rates are half of what they are in the U.S., or lower. This got me wondering: how does the nation of HOURCAR compare?

Digging in to our annual survey results from last summer, we seem to do rather well. First of all, HOURCAR members tend to use non-driving (and healthier) transportation options more after they join HOURCAR. According to our survey, after joining HOURCAR:
* 28% of our members bike more,
* 33% walk more, and
* 31% take transit more,
compared with
* 3% biking less,
* 1% walking less and
* 10% taking transit less.

Overall,
* 66% of HOURCAR members walk daily (5 to 7 days per week), and 20% more walk 2-4 days per week.
* 25% of HOURCAR members bike daily, and another quarter bike at least two days a week, and
* 33% of HOURCAR members use transit every day, while another third take transit twice a week or more.
And, bucking the trend of America's car culture, 60% of HOURCAR members report they never use a personal automobile. In other words, HOURCAR members are on par, as far as using non-automotive transportation goes, with some of the healthiest countries around! So not only is HOURCAR good for the health of the environment, but it's good for the health of its members.

HOURCAR on Facebook

Are you part of this social networking site called Facebook? (i.e. do you impulsively check your Facebook account every seven minutes during the entire day not getting anything else done as you wait to see wall posts all day long?)

Well, now you can add waiting for HOURCAR updates to your compulsion. HOURCAR has a Facebook page where you can see HOURCAR pictures, find out information about HOURCAR, post on our "wall" and let others see your support of sustainable car sharing in the Twin Cities. All you have to do is go to the page and become a "fan" of HOURCAR.

NEW CARS!

Have you noticed that new car smell? It's entirely possible, as HOURCAR is adding new cars. Oh, yes, indeed we are.

A couple of these cars are in entirely new locations. One is in Elliot Park, sponsored by Aeon Homes through our McKnight Matching Grant program. It's located on Park Avenue north of 17th Street in Minneapolis.


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Another car in a new location is in the Mill Quarter Ramp near the Guthrie. It is reserved for use during the business day (from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.) but is open to any HOURCAR user at other times. It lives on the second floor of the ramp right by the elevators.


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Thanks to support from Macalester College we've placed a second car at the Macalester hub. It's high time, too, as that car has been getting tons of use recently. Now members there can choose between two cars!


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We've also swapped in new cars for two of our older cars. One, at the 46th Street LRT hub, is our second solar-powered plug-in hybrid vehicle. So be sure to plug it in when you're done and get a solar charge.


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The final car is at our most popular hub at the Wedge Coop in Minneapolis.


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Get out there and enjoy 'em. They're new and spiffy and are just begging to be driven all over town!

Electric vehicles coming to a car share near you?

It's that time of year again. Time for thousands of people to descend on Detroit and see what the car companies have come up with this year. (Do note: HOURCAR is not a bunch of car nuts. We all see cars as, in the best case, a small part of the transportation system. Hence car sharing. A case in point: several days this past summer we had to make sure someone brought a car to work as an emergency vehicle for us to use in case we had to go to one of the HOURCAR hubs, otherwise we'd all come by bus, bike or foot.) So we've had a peripheral interest in the goings on at the NAIAS, especially as the car companies promise more green offerings to come.

What is some of the gossip?

1. The new 2010 Prius will have slightly more room and better mileage. It's not perfect, but an improvement over the current generation. Look for some of these in the fleet in the coming year. A Toyota-made plug-in Prius is also in the works, but no time frame is out for that. Of course, we already have a couple of PHEVs!

2. Honda has a new hyrbid out, too. It's called the Insight, but isn't a tiny, two-seater anymore. It also doesn't get 65 mpg, but it's a bit more practical. We'll be assessing these for the HOURCAR fleet going forwards.

3. The most interesting news, however, is the news of Toyota's FTEV, which stands for "Future Toyota Electric Vehicle." How clever. It's not so much that Toyota is planning a small, electric car (there have been lots of other rumours about little EVs, such as the Smart Fortwo EV) but that, according to a New York Times blog piece, they are targeting the car as car sharing organisations.

But Toyota isn’t looking at the conventional car market for the FTEV. Instead, it sees the car as ideal for the growing market in car-sharing vehicles.

“We’re focusing less on traditional commercial use,” said Bob Reinert, national manager of Toyota’s advanced technology group.

That's pretty cool, I think.

What would you like to see from the car companies?

Baby, its cold outside!

Do you ever wonder how the cars get clean or who that person is under the hood of that HOURCAR? Thats Tia, the Fleet Coordinator (me). And on days like today I am thanking anyone who will listen for the invention of long underwear and wool hats. Making sure cars will be available in the cold, getting new tires and brakes, checking washer fluid and changing a few sets of wipers blades: that was my day today, when the temps were at minus 21 degrees.

(These are, in fact, the coldest temperatures ever experienced by HOURCAR, and as far as we know, by an English-language car sharing organisation. Why "English-language"? Because Communauto has seen colder temperatures in Quebec.)

On occasion, I will have a helper, usually my 9 year old daughter. We get to chit chat in the car as we drive around the city checking on cars and keeping things in order. Today we had to look sadly at all the dirty cars because all the car washes were closed due to the weather. Although I know the folks at Park & Lake car wash and The Downtowner will be happy to see me come next week, when the temps are up and the cars can get a bath! I know them by name and they know me by wash and by logo.

I think dirty cars are a badge of honor for HOURCAR though. A sign that these cars see so much use, and that after three and a half years, they are a vital part of the transit picture for the Cities. We've broken them in well, after three winters! Its like a pair of running shoes. Its the soft, worn ones with the broken and tied laces that feel the best.

So, if you see the short, smiley woman under the hood, or driving an HOURCAR, give a wave!

Solar comes to Minneapolis

Whilst the HOURCAR at the 46th Light Rail Station is not yet a plug in Hybrid (look for it in the next couple of weeks) the solar panels at the station are up. For now, and whenever the 46th Street LRT car is out on the road, the panels will feed power back in to the grid to power nearby things like, oh, the light rail!

We had an event with Mayor Rybak and Representative Frank Hornstein (60B) and we will have pictures from that soon!


The HOURCAR in front of the Metro Transit building which has 2kV of solar capacity on the roof.


A closeup of the building.


When not powering the HOURCAR, the panels feed in to the grid, helping to power various local users, including the Hiawatha Line!

And if you think that a few car-powering solar panels can't come close to running the LRT, well, you're partially right. We can't run the whole line. But light rail trains are very efficient (you can see a long website which compares different transportation modes here) so we'd make a dent. For example:

The Combino light rail vehicle [similar in size to the Hiawatha Line] is about the same energy efficiency as a Porsche Carrera GT; the Porsche seats 2, the Combino seats 67 and can carry 180. The efficiency advantage is huge, though the Porsche obviously accelerates better and has a higher top speed!

Obviously a Prius is more efficient than a Porsche. But when you are on the Light Rail, you're in a vehicle as powerful as a sports car, but which carries 50-100 times as many people! That's efficient.

Why car sharing works

Here's a chart of a single HOURCAR's use from 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.:

Green segments are different reservations. We often see cars with three or four reservations per day (this particular day saw three other cars with four separate reservations each) but I'm not sure I've ever seen five. This means that five people who would have otherwise needed a car each were able to all use the same car. Instead of five parking spaces, one. The average car is used for only about an hour per day, and only by one person. This HOURCAR was used nearly half a dozen times by as many people in one day — and the next day it will be driven by others. This spreads out the cost of insurance and parking and maintenance and depreciation, making the utility of the resource much more efficient.

Car sharing works because it allows for the efficient use of automobiles — and the efficient use of other transportation modes. HOURCAR members bike, walk, take the bus and who knows what else (ski? paddle? skate? This is Minnesota after all) and when they need a car, they hop in and HOURCAR and go. Sometimes five times in a single day.

Update: We've since had a single day with two cars each receiving five reservations, although they were not in use for such solid periods of time. Still, it's great to see the cars being use so efficiently!

Taking the bus just got easier (thanks to Google)

I've always thought that time passes slowest when you are waiting for the bus. Seconds seem to become minutes; you know you are on a frequent route but until you see the bus or train on the horizon the second hand can't move fast enough. If only you could know exactly when the next bus is coming!

Well, now you can. This summer, MetroTransit launched a tool called "NexTrip" which tracks every bus and train by GPS to tell when they are coming (in real time for the next 20 minutes, scheduled departures thereafter). You can access this information in many ways, including on the MetroTransit website or by calling 612.373.3333, which has live support during the day and automated schedules 24 hours a day (keep pressing 1 when prompted to get the automated schedules).

But perhaps the best way to get the information is on Google Maps. The Twin Cities are now one of several cities in the country where every single bus stop is shown if you zoom in, and if you click on a bus stop, it shows all upcoming departures. Any bus in the Twin Cities. How cool is that?

Here's an example, showing the HOURCAR hub at the Wedge in Minneapolis. If you click the "view larger map" link below and go to Google Maps, you can click on either of those two bus stops to see upcoming trips. It makes taking the bus that much easier; and HOURCAR is there for you when the bus or a bike or your own two feet need a breather.


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HOURCAR voted

You may remember that we ran a special on election day. It was our hope that one of our politically-connected but car-light members would take advantage and go help people get to the polls or something. Isn't the ultimate car sharing when you use a shared car to share rides with many other people?

It is.

One of our members, Nick Rosencrans, writes:

I was thrilled to see HourCar's promotion on election day. After reading about how I could rent an HourCar at $2.00 an hour and 8¢ a mile, I picked up my telephone. I decided to spend all day volunteering, driving folks who needed a ride to and from the polls.
That night, I drove to the Crowne Plaza in Saint Paul to watch the results come in, along with most media outlets and thousands of other volunteers.

Thanks to HourCar, I was able to drive about a dozen folks to vote, who otherwise couldn't participate in this historic election. Attached are a few pictures I took during the day.

Thanks so much for your service to democracy, to the environment and to the people of Minnesota!

Oh and he took some nifty pictures too:



HOURCAR at the polls.



Nick rockin' the I VOTED sticker.

Nick, thank you for using HOURCAR to help everyone participate in democracy!

[Edit 11/10: As usual, Minnesota led the nation in voting turnout. Ho hum, just another day in the state where nearly 80% of eligible voters go to the polls. Beat that...every other state in the Union!]

HOURCAR VOTES 2008

On Tuesday, November 4 (which is election day in case you have forgotten), HOURCAR is helping its members vote. If you need to give an elderly neighbour, friend or relative a ride to the polls, grab an HOURCAR. If you are working a Get Out The Vote campaign, grab an HOURCAR. If you are serving as an election official or poll watcher, grab an HOURCAR.

Each car will have a map of the wards and precincts in its city and a list of local polling places, so vote early (but please, not often).

See more at www.HOURCAR.org

Have a good story from your HOURCAR VOTES experience? Email it to us at info@hourcar.org.

HOURCAR's rates, effective from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. (polling hours) are just
$2 per hour and 008¢ per mile.
Find out more at HOURCAR.org

More information on voting:

Statewide precinct finder

Minneapolis precinct map

Saint Paul precinct map

Minneapolis polling places

Ramsey County poll finder


(HOURCAR in no way endorses any particular candidate or party.)