Not owning a car is one of the biggest ways you can change your carbon footprint—a large car, SUV or truck can have about 12,000 pounds of carbon emissions per year—but for a lot of us the idea of giving up the keys seems not just inconvenient, but impossible. How would we do big grocery shopping runs? How would we get to work? What about when we wanted to get out of town for the weekend? Yet the reality is that there are solutions for most of the biggest fears and almost all concerns can be alleviated with one of three options: Public transit, carsharing and ridesharing. Now, two out of those three popular services have merged. Enter Zimrides and Zipcar.

For those who don’t know, Zipcar is the world’s largest carsharing service and operates in more than 50 cities throughout North America and the United Kingdom. The premise is simple; you pay an initial joining fee and an annual fee to be part of the Zipcar service. In return, you get a Zipcard that can be used to access thousands of cars around the world. Members can choose to set up a monthly use plan or just use the cars as they desire, and reserve the cars online, either way, for an hour or more. Since gas and insurance are included, it’s as-you-need-it car ownership without the hassle. And, lest we forget the environmental motivator here, Zipcar saves about 32 million gallons of crude oil a year, and each Zipcar takes 15-20 personally-owned autos off the road.

Zimride is carpooling, but you find your ride from a much larger pool of people. It’s a website that allows visitors to find a ride for a one-time trip, choose a carpool for a regular commute or even location someone to share a cab with. Just like in traditional carpooling, setting up a Zimride saves money and the environment.

Now drivers and riders can have the best of both worlds by getting a Zimride in a Zipcar, meaning that no one (even the person giving the ride) needs to actually own a car. The Zimride/Zipcar merge is being tested out at Stanford University before moving on to campuses around the country. Because the costs of renting a Zipcar, though they can actually save person money annually, can seem steep (especially for students) at around $69 a day, sharing Zipcar rides through Zimride will allow more people to use the Zipcar service by splitting costs. With enough ride sharers, in fact, the costs could be lower than transit. Drivers and riders can use either the Zipcar or Zimride site to find fellow passengers or a ride, and the Zimride site will even match postings about available trips with postings looking for specific rides.

To make your time in a Zipcar even greener, choose one of the hybrid Zipcars (usually Toyota Priuses) and look for the new plug-in electric vehicle hybrids they’re working on making available in San Francisco.

Powered by Bookmarkify™