This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: October 24, 2008 - Hey there, savvy commuter. You who MetroLinks, bicycles, walks or carpools to work. And you, too, Mr. or Ms. Wannabe. If you haven’t heard of WeCar, this is your read.
WeCar, the Enterprise car-sharing program that allows members to rent an accessibly parked hybrid on an hourly basis, debuted in St. Louis earlier this year and has been gathering members ever since.
I car, you car, WeCar
“It’s WeCar-in-a-box, if you will,” says public relations manager Lisa Martini about the car-sharing product that Enterprise is marketing nationwide. The product’s centralized technology and Enterprise’s ability to create a program that meets specific group needs have made WeCar appealing to corporate customers, such as Google and Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI), and schools such as John A. Logan College in Carterville, Ill.
“The biggest difference is a company called Enterprise,” says senior vice president of Enterprise Jeff Parell about how WeCar distinguishes itself from similar programs, such as Zipcar. “Our customers -- who we already had relationships with -- came up to us and asked, ‘Hey, do you have car sharing?' ”
“There are two groups” of typical users, says Enterprise’s St. Louis WeCar project manager Steve Salemi about the program that has recently gone national: “The downtown resident who has no vehicle or has moved from two cars to one car and different corporations who are looking to subsidize workers’ transportation needs.”
St. Louis has variations of both. There are the public downtown users who live and/or work in the city and take advantage of the nine cars stationed within the boundaries of North Broadway, Washington Ave., Tucker Blvd. and Market St. These cars are part of a shared-revenue program between Enterprise and St. Louis Car Sharing Cooperative, headed by Citizens for Modern Transit. Then there are the Washington University students and teachers who have access to six cars on the main campus.
Salemi estimates that membership between the two St. Louis programs has grown to about 500 this year. Amos Harris, president of the development company Brady Capital, is one of downtown WeCar’s biggest fans. He recently sold his personal vehicle and now shares one with his fiancé. He walks to work on Olive Street and uses the WeCar parked within view of his office window three to four times a week for business.
“For me, it’s a no brainer,” he says. “It’s $35 a year (for membership) and $10 a hour. They pay for parking, insurance and gas.”
It’s true. Each car has a permanently reserved parking space, marked by a green and black sign. As a member, you get a keycard that opens the car door once you make an online reservation. Waiting inside are keys to the vehicle and a prepaid gas card, just in case the tank dips below a quarter full during your ride. Membership also includes limited damage insurance. With AAA estimating this year’s cost of owning and operating a new vehicle at 54.1 cents a mile, it can pay to WeCar.
Harris says he sees only one possible improvement to the program.
“Enterprise is a big company, and they have not created a culture and community around WeCar,” he says. Harris has an idea about how the company, which boasts more than 6,000 locations worldwide, might do that, “Have a party for the WeCar users.” While it has not yet hosted any savvy commuter shindigs, Enterprise seems pleased with the way things are going overall.
“It started out as a ‘could we?’,” says Salemi about the St. Louis pilot programs. “We took input from our partners and built the programs. Since we sat down with both groups (Wash U and St. Louis Car Sharing Cooperative), a lot of the Q&A and troubleshooting was solved before the programs started.”
Each car is monitored by GPS, so theft has not been an issue. The one hurdle Enterprise has encountered is that users aren’t as familiar with operating a hybrid, whose gas engine switches off to allow for electric power usage during normal operation.
“The Prius is a unique vehicle, so we’ve been pretty detailed about the operation of the vehicle,” says Salemi.
Tom Shrout, executive director of Citizens for Mass Transit, says that the biggest challenge to the downtown program is prospective customers’ “insecurity” about heading to the office without a personal vehicle.
“A lot of potential public transit users think, ‘Oh, sometimes I need my car, what can I do?’” says Shrout. “This is the perfect service for people like that.”
Hear that, wannabe savvy commuter?
For more information, visit www.wecar.com.
Anna Vitale is a freelance writer in St. Louis.