How to vote for a zipcar in your village

I contacted zipcar to ask how people could lobby for a zipcar in their neighborhood. Go to www.zipcar.com/notify-me and put in your home address (or an address near where you want a car). Zipcar uses this information in guiding their placement of cars. Maybe Bike Newton can spearhead a get-out-the-vote campaign for a village center - any village nominations?

(Full disclosure: I have no financial interest in zipcar - I am interested in reducing the % of Newton households which have multiple vehicles)

Film tonight

JUNE 28 (Mon) 7 pm Film: “Beyond the Motor City”, Newton Main Library, co-sponsor: green decade newton

Here's a preview.

An alternative model for car sharing

An alternative to zipcar is a non-profit model that partners with municipalities and transit agencies, like citycarshare. This bay area organization appears to beat zipcar on a $ per hour basis. Zipcar seems to have Boston covered pretty well, but could a non-profit model work in 'burbs like Newton?

Suburban Zipcar experience

Things worked out somewhat differently than I was expecting on my first zipcar use, but I give the experience a thumbs up. For starters, neither of the 2 Riverside T zipcars were available when I needed them monday. But the zipcar search turned up an available car at Babson College in Wellesley, 3.8 miles away - more than what I was expecting, but it turned out to be a nice bike ride there on backroads I'd never been on before (I saw a deer on the Leo Martin golf course on Intervale Rd). So that was kind of an obstacle turned pleasant surprise. It is an interesting how a minor inconvenience, if it can be recognized as a surmountable barrier rather than a deal breaker, becomes added motivation to make a plan work.

Note to zipcar: No bike racks near the zipcars at Babson College. I used your parking sign to lock up. A bike rack would be great.

The most ironic part of my zipcar day was the drive home from Central Massachusetts to Wellesley via Cambridge. My return trip involved being a cut-through commuter through Newton! And I made probably the same calculation as many a cut-through Newton commuter. I had to get from Cambridge (where I dropped off my colleague) to Wellesley. I cut through Washington St. from West Newton to Wellesley. No tolls! And not much confidence that freeways would be faster during rush hour anyway. A weird feeling being the person who I am usually looking at as a biker from the sidelines.

My take away messages from this experience: zipcar works for a suburban one car family needing an extra car from time to time. It takes a bit more effort than in a dense urban center, but not too onerous. I would love to have a zipcar parked in my village center of Auburndale, or another one at the Riverside T. In fact, I would love there to be a zipcar in each and every village of Newton. I trust (hope) zipcar tracks requests vs. car availability and member locations to site cars in new locations where they are needed, or where the demographics suggest they would be used. I can't see zipcar going wrong with a car in Newton Centre, for example. What I don't know is how Newtonites could 'vote' for a zipcar in their village centers. I put in a comment/suggestion to zipcar to find out. A question for Newton: could Newton be zipcar friendly by subsidizing the parking space(s)?

Can Newton downsize its number of cars?

59% of households in Newton are multi-vehicle. Can families go single car in Newton? This often seems impractical, if not impossible. In my household we are trying to make it work, but not without challenges. Last week, embroiled in a logistical dilemma involving my need to travel to central Massachusetts while my daughter was scheduled for a dental appointment in Needham, I looked into zipcar. I found there are 3 locations in or very near to Newton - 2 cars at the Riverside T, 2 at the Woodland T, and 2 at Comm. Ave and Lake St., next to the end of the B line. Riverside is a 5 min bike ride from our house; I have my zipcard now and plan to try it soon. I'll report back here.
If any Newtonite wants to sign on, I can refer you (email nathan@bu.edu) and will give you the $50 driving credit and keep zero for myself. Full disclosure: I have no financial interest in zipcar.
Embryonic in Newton, where could zipcar extend here? What about one or two cars in each village center? Would this allow your household to car-downsize? Are there other possible models for car sharing appropriate to Newton? (I wonder if neighbors with compatible needs could share an extra vehicle).

Bike-Powered Garden, Garden-Powered Bike

Today I biked to our little community garden plot at Nahanton Park. That's not, by itself, unusual. I get there by bike most of the time.

But today, I was putting in tomatoes. The plants were a donation from our upstairs neighbor, some nice heirloom cherries, and they'd sat in the yard in their little containers for, um... let's just call it a few weeks. They'd gotten a little leggy. In fact, one was bearing fruit. So there were these rather tall tomato seedlings, the tomato cages, a set of onions...

I resigned myself to driving.



Then inspiration, bungees, velcro, and a bike bag led to this:

Here's a better view of how I attached the tomato cages:

Incidentally, everything on that poster is in our garden, except the potatoes. And instead of green peppers, chilis. Call me a traditionalist. (Or call me an unwitting dupe of WW2 propaganda posters!)

So far, the garden is bike-powered. When I start harvesting, the bike will be garden-powered.

Once Upon a Time

... it was patriotic to conserve.  Americans were united against a common enemy.


These days, it seems as if what unites Americans is a right to go anywhere at any time, using any and all resources, at any expense.

It's time to put a flag on my bike.