Prius floor mat recall

You may have heard about the floor mat recall for millions of vehicles, including the mainstay of the HOURCAR fleet, the 2004-2009 Prius. We were aware of this problem several years ago and for that reason had fabric floor mats on the driver's side instead of rubber ones, which were more prone to sticking the accelerator. We've since replaced these with molded plastic mats, which, since they are molded, are unable to slide up and cause problems. We are investigating whether we need to take any further measures with this latest recall.

Drive safe!

Cast Your Vote for HOURCAR

You can help HOURCAR raise funds this fall by taking part in two exciting
campaigns being run by our local business supporters. And as you know, more
money means more HOURCARs—something we all love.

Your first opportunity to support HOURCAR is through the Wedge Community
Co-op’s WedgeShare grant program. If you are a Wedge member-owner, please
don’t miss your chance to vote for HOURCAR when you receive your WedgeShare
ballot in the October/November newsletter. Voting will begin approximately
October 1 and will close on October 28 at the Co-op’s annual meeting. If
you’re not a member-owner, check out the amazing Wedge at
www.wedge.coop, or visit them in person at
2105 Lyndale Avenue South in Minneapolis.

Winning a WedgeShare grant would mean that we could purchase and place a
second HOURCAR in the Co-op’s neighborhood!

Your second opportunity to support us is Patagonia’s Voice Your Choice
Program. Patagonia will award three prizes of $2,500, $1,500, or $1,000 to
local environmental groups. The Neighborhood Energy Connection (NEC) with
its HOURCAR program has been selected as a recipient. The amount of the
prize we receive is based on the number of customer votes cast for our
organization.

Your job? Visit the Patagonia store at 1648 Grand Avenue in Saint Paul (just
west of Snelling Avenue next to Macalester College) between September 24 and
October 24 and cast your vote for the NEC and HOURCAR! No purchase is
required, but you might enjoy browsing Patagonia’s full line of hiking,
climbing, fly fishing, and other silent sports apparel. Patagonia’s mission
is to “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to
inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” Patagonia has
hosted an HOURCAR hub for three years and has been a terrific supporter.
More at http://www.Patagonia.com.

Thank you for your enthusiasm and for your willingness to go the extra mile
for the NEC and HOURCAR. If you have any questions, call Mary Morse at the
NEC: (651) 221-4462 Ext. 113, or marym[at]TheNEC.org.

Use HOURCAR with Metro Transit Trip Planner

Have you ever wanted to find a bus route from an HOURCAR hub, but been unsure of exactly where the hub was (by address) or which routes passed by? Well, worry no more: HOURCAR hubs are loaded in to the Metro Transit trip planner database, which is easily accessed off the Metro Transit home page. You don't even have to type in the whole name of the HOURCAR hub; in fact, the easiest thing to do is just type in "HOURCAR", which then shows a list of all the hubs in the database, and you can choose the one you want.



Then, once you've chosen a destination, Metrotransit will show you the bus schedule, and even the next bus coming along the route. How simple is that?!

(Do note: some of our newer hubs are not in this database yet, but we are working to get them added.)

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.

State park of the week: Fort Snelling

We recently put state park passes in all of the HOURCARs with daily rates. And each week we are going to be featuring a park the blog. Our first featured state park: Fort Snelling.

"Fort Snelling?" you might say. "Hey, that's right here in the Cities! What's the bloody point? Who would drive an HOURCAR there? Why not bike—it's right on a bunch of trails! Heck, you can get there easily on the bus (from Saint Paul) or the Light Rail (from Minneapolis)!"

Well, that's kind of the point. Most of our members, if they wanted to go to Fort Snelling (or Minneahaha Falls; bet you didn't know it was originally a state park), would grab their bike or Go-To card. Why bother driving? It's right in our backyard. And it's pretty darned nice.

There are miles of walking and bike trails to enjoy amongst the lakes at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. The trails are groomed for skiing in the winter (throw your skis in the HOURCAR when the snow flies for these or any number of other trails). You can get lost in the woods, that is, until a plane buzzes over or you run in to a bridge abutment. And it's wicked easy to get there.

Minnesota State Park Passes

HOURCAR recently put Minnesota state park passes in each of our daily rate cars. Each week, we'll profile a state park where you can drive the HOURCARs and not worry about paying the fee there.

Minnesota has 66 state parks and is the second oldest state park system in the country (did you know that?). The range from waterfalls to prairies, dense forests to deep underground. And a bunch are along some big lake.

If you have your own pictures from our state parks (whether you got there by HOURCAR or not, although pictures with an HOURCAR, or HOURCAR t-shirt, are great), send them in to us and we'll be glad to post 'em!

HOURCAR welcomes car #21

A few weeks ago we told you about a new HOURCAR hub coming to Kingfield in Minneapolis. We've been driving our spiffy new red car around for a couple weeks now, and with everything ready to roll, you can too! Car #21, a red Honda Fit, goes in to service at 38th and Nicollet, right on the 18 and 23 bus lines, today. We hope that it will serve many of you who live in Uptown and southwards (and we are working on new cars there, don't worry), especially if you need to make trips south of town. We also hope that it will entice a bunch of Kingfielders to join in on the car-light lifestyle and take some vehicles off the road!

The Kingfield car is partially funded by the Kingfield Neighborhood Association through a Minneapolis Climate Change grant and the McKnight Foundation. Our thanks to the folks at the Kingfield Neighborhood Association, the city of Minneapolis and the McKnight foundation.

(Also, if you want to help sponsor an HOURCAR, we still have McKnight challenge grants hanging around, but they are going fast. email us for more information.)

We'll be out and about in the neighborhood promoting the HOURCAR, so come drop by and get more information or just say hi!

And if you want to join HOURCAR, you can sign up here!


View Larger Map

HOURCAR's 4th annual member survey

Last week, HOURCAR turned four. In late June of 2005, HOURCAR launched with half a dozen cars, a couple dozen members and some hopes and dreams. Every year since, we've surveyed our members to find out, well, all sorts of information. We like to find out if anyone has given up their cars, if people bike and walk more (or less) and what our members think we could do better.

First of all, thank you to everyone who participated. We had over 300 survey responses (and congrats to Nadya, Becky, Rosalyn and Stephanie for winning the four $100 driving credits we drew as thanks for completing the survey), not a bad turnout.

Now to some of the nitty-gritty. Is HOURCAR getting cars off the road? Yup. More than half of our respondents were car-free before HOURCAR and intend to stay that way, and another 25% have either sold their car since joining or decided not to acquire an additional car.

We also asked people to estimate how many miles they drive per year (overall, not just in an HOURCAR) versus the amount they drove before joining. Now, this is somewhat sketchy because these are self-reported estimates, but of the 188 respondents (less than a quarter of the membership), the aggregate savings (including those who drove more) were 370,000 miles per year, more than are put on the entire HOURCAR fleet.

Then there's walking and biking. (HOURCAR loves walking and biking.) One third of HOURCAR members report that, since joining HOURCAR, they walk and bike more, only a few (fewer than five percent) report walking and biking less. And how often are HOURCAR members hitting the pavement? Well, 58% of members say they walk somewhere daily, and 83% report walking for transportation at least twice a week. 29% bike daily, and more than half bike at least twice weekly. 58% of HOURCAR members ride transit at least twice a week, more than half of those ride daily. Plus, most of our members use transit frequently to get around.

And then there's the use of a personal vehicle. When we asked how often our members drove one, 65% chose "never."

Check back soon for some fun anecdotes our members sent in!

What's black and white and red all over?

Why the newest HOURCAR, of course: a red Honda Fit with black and white decals. It's going in to the Kingfield Neighborhood in Minneapolis (soon)! And we have your first exclusive pictures.




Stay tuned for its exact location (it'll be near 38th and Nicollet); it will be launched in early July. Or, if you live nearby (or near any other HOURCAR), Sign up now!

HOURCAR member rewards

You use your HOURCAR key fob to save money on transportation, and now you can use it to save money at a growing network of local businesses! You don't have to be tempted to use an HOURCAR (if you don't want to), as most of them are an easy walk, bike ride or bus trip from our hubs. Just show your key fob and let the savings begin! Here are our current partners; and keep an eye on the Hubcap blog for more. And in the vein of social media, we'll provide links to a bunch of their Facebook pages so you can be a "fan" of theirs. (You're already a fan of HOURCAR, right? Good.)

Jerabeks New Bohemian Coffee House
63 West Winifred Street, Saint Paul.
(Jerebeks on Facebook)
Offer: 10% off with key fob in addition to 10% with your own cup



Common Good Books
165 Western Avenue, Saint Paul.
(Common Good Books on Facebook)
Offer: 10% off any item except magazines, newspapers, and specialty items


Bryant Lake Bowl
810 West Lake Street, Minneapolis.
(Bryant Lake Bowl on Facebook)
Offer: Buy 1 game of bowling, get 1 free. Up to 3 games at one visit. Shoe rental included.


Red Stag Supper Club
509 1st Avenue NE, Minneapolis.
(Red Stag on Facebook)
Offer: Complimentary Happy Hour Drink anytime. 1 drink per guest per visit. Includes select wine, taps, and specialty cocktails.


Park Square Theatre
20 W 7th Place, Saint Paul.
(Park Square on Facebook)
Offer: $10 off any adult ticket for any performance


Bibelot Shops
in Saint Paul: Grand & Lexington, Saint Anthony Park
in Minneapolis: Linden Hills, Northeast
(Bibelot Shops on Facebook)
Offer: 20% off one item. (Cannot be combined with any other coupon or discount.)


Anodyne Coffee House
4301 Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis
Offer: Buy 1, get 1 half off PLUS 10% with your own cup



Everyday People Clothing Exchange
1599 Selby Avenue, Saint Paul
Offer: 15% off total purchase


Fast and Furless
2615 E Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis
Offer: 10% off


History Theatre
30 E. 10th Street, Saint Paul
(History Theatre on Facebook)
Offer: $5 off a regular priced ticket for 2009-2010 season (Cannot be combined with any other discount)


Events throughout the Twin Cities
Offer: $5 off your first event

What's your Walkscore?

According to the website Walkscore.com, ours is 98. Well, for two of our cars, anyway. #6 and #10 score 98 out of a possible 100. The rest of the HOURCAR fleet range as low as 66.

The average for the whole fleet is 87, meaning that we are "very walkable" and close to a "walker's paradise" overall. Of course, the site has its limitations: directions are as the crow flies and it sometimes misses certain stores in categories (like, you know, the Wedge and Mississippi Market Coops in "grocery stores").

They recently ranked the 40 largest cities (*) in the country (since Minneapolis and Saint Paul are separate, neither made the cut; an oversight on Walkscore's part) and the winner was San Francisco, which scores an eminently walkable 86, followed by New York, Boston and Chicago. (They have some pretty nice maps, too.) So, does that mean that HOURCAR is more walkable than San Francisco? Discuss.

(*) Why they did this I do not know. More pertinent would have been the central cities of the 40 largest metro areas in the country. But their methodology is their methodology (and, hey, it says almost nothing about access to jobs, which is probably the most important aspect of a location); perhaps it would make sense to contact them and tell them to please rank the Twin Cities, if only because we'd find it interesting.

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.


View Larger Map

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.


View Larger Map

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!


View Larger Map
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.


View Larger Map

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


View Larger Map

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

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!

Sunglasses sharing

I was dropping off a car (#15) this evening and fumbling for the overhead light switch when I mistakenly opened the sunglasses holder. Inside I found a pair of sunglasses. Usually this would entail a lost-and-found report and taking the item back to the office, except I then found a note. It read:

HOURCAR shared sunglasses. Left in the car on purpose.

We all know how great it is to share cars, but one of our members is taking it to another level. We at HOURCAR try to foster a sense of community, but that means noting unless the community helps us out. Of course, it seems you are all succeeding at that. So, kudos!

(And if anyone wants to leave sunglasses in other cars, with this type of note, we're all for it!)



By the way, we kind of want to know who left these here. If the member in question wants to email us (info@hourcar.org), go for it. If you want to remain anonymous, that's fine too. But no matter, you're awesome.

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.


View Larger Map

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.)

HOURCAR is so so solar

Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Saint Paul mayor Chris Coleman spoke today about HOURCAR as we unveiled the first solar-powered shared car in the world!

We're aggregating news on our home page, and pictures are posted below.

Our 2kW solar panel.

And our plug-in hybrid Prius.

Senator Amy Klobuchar

Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman

Councilmember Russ Stark, Mayor Coleman and Senator Klobuchar

The mayor and the Senator share a laugh.

Senator Klobuchar talks to the press.

Senator Klobuchar goes for a drive. As far as we know, she's the first congress member to drive a solar-powered plug-in hybrid, and definitely the first one in a solar-powered shared car (because it's the first one :)

Senator Klobuchar returns from her trip. HOURCAR's own Christopher rides shotgun.

Senator Klobuchar plugs in the Prius.

Welcome to the HOURCAR Hubcap Blog

We'll be sharing all kinds of exciting news and information about HOURCAR, car sharing and sustainable transportation. Stay tuned for frequent updates!