Car sharing

My cats in the bike trailer (on the way to the vet)

I’m lucky enough to live in a city that has easy transit access, so I’ve never had to own a car. While bikes (including our cool new bike trailer – which I even used to take our cats to the vet) and buses do their jobs about 99% of the time, there are those days when I need a car. To visit family living on the coast or to pick up heavy groceries (namely cat food and litter). So that is where car sharing comes in.

Zipcar has been a wonderful service that has been in Portland for a few years and it is also in several other cities – which is nice for traveling. But what if more people shared their cars? What if two neighbors decided to share one vehicle? That would leave a car sitting idle for less time of the day and would greatly reduce the easy tendency to just drive somewhere, when you could walk, bike, or bus. Oregon is looking into allowing other car sharing services.

What are your experiences car sharing? Would you share your car with someone if you made some money from it and drove less? Watch a video from Streetfilms to learn more about car sharing.