2 Zipcars, 1 Weekend

Looks like MetroRiderLA has a double dose of Zipcar fun for you today. First Tyke’s story about dumping his Zipcar membership, and now my story about Zipping around in multiple Zipcars this weekend.

It may not be as initially shocking as “2 Girls, 1 Cup” but spending a weekend doing a lot of driving leaves me feeling the same: a little queasy, sad at the current state of the world, and asking myself “why the hell would anyone do that?”.

Before this holiday weekend, I had only taken out a Zipcar once since Flexcar became Zipcar and made a big poopy mess out of the whole L.A. car sharing scene. Due to the top secret political nature of that Zipcar outing, I never wrote about it. Luckily for all of you, this weekend offered me not just one, but two opportunities to take out a Zipcar and move about this city the way you’re supposed to: behind the wheel of your very own personal automobile. Vrooooom!

It all began innocently enough, my lady friend was flying into LAX and I was planning on hopping on a Flyaway and meeting her there as I would usually do. Unfortunately, her flight was coming in quite “late”, 11:30pm, and I feared that if I took the Flyaway, upon returning to Union Station, our trusty subway system would no longer be in service. Knowing that she would be accompanied by some heavy ass baggage and a healthy dose of travel exhaustion, I knew a 2.5 mile walk home from Union Station was nothing either of us were interested in. Nor were we interested in transferring to some stinkin’ dirty bus. I thought about the possibility of taking a taxi from Union Station, but the prospect of spending $15 to go 2.5 miles, plus the cost of the Flyaway, just didn’t sit well with me. It was too much money for too much inconvenience. So it was time to turn to the ultimate tool in modern luxurious ultra convenience: the personal automobile. Vrooooom!!

The kicker is that I don’t own a personal automobile, the closest thing I have is Zipcar, and ever since the the merger Zipcar has seemed less like a convenience and more like a burden. I used to have 40+ Flexcars in my neighborhood, tens of them within a short walk from my home. Now, the nearest Zipcar is 2.5 miles away parked in front of a Jewish fraternity on the USC campus. I had to face the facts though, I needed a car. I loaded up the Zipcar website, hoping that one of the 11 cars at USC would be available. One thing I’ve noticed since the merger, and this is like minor props to Zipcar, is that the cars at USC are often in high demand. There’s been a few times I’ve checked and found none of the cars to be available. That rarely happened with Flexcar. Luck was on my side though, and there were some cars available, although not as many as you might think.

A Scion xB, inexplicably named “Brys”, was available and only 2.63 miles away. I booked Brys for 2.5 hours, which at $9/hr would come out to an estimated $24.36 according to the Zipcar website. Car-sharing math I guess. The Zipcar website is decent, and has nice integration with Google Maps, but unfortunately it does not include a list of nearby transit stops like Flexcar did. Instead it provides a useless link to metro.net. At least link directly to the Trip Planner Zipcar! Or better yet, link to a Public Routes transit map, like we here at MetroRiderLA do for our Transit Oriented Weekends.

Bike racks at USC.

The only easy, reliable way to get from my home to the Zipcar was with the ultimate machine, second only to the human body in its elegance and economic use of energy… my bicycle. I donned my helmet and ventured out into the crisp spring night, traveling past Lakers fans at the Staples Center and coasting down Figueroa until I hit 30th Street and veered right into Trojan territory. One of the best parts about Zipcar being on college campuses, and the USC campus in particular, is that there are bike racks aplenty. I locked up my two-wheeled wonder and found the Scion Brys in the parking lot in front of said Jewish fraternity. Brys had all the styling of a miniature Metro rapid bus, albeit painted in silver instead of sunset red. I would soon find out that it handled much like a bus as well. A swipe of my Zipcard across the sensor on the windshield yielded the satisfying click of the doors unlocking, rather instantly, a contrast to the sometimes slow or non-functioning Flexcar sensors. Once in the car I met a not-so-pleasant surprise: the fuel gauge was hovering just above empty. If you are not familiar with car-sharing rules, if the gas tank drops below 1/4 full, it is your responsibility to re-fuel the car. It seems as if the last driver failed to adhere to the rules.

Fillin’ her up.

So first stop, the fillin’ station! Zipcar provides a fuel card so the exorbitant cost of gas ($3.61 /gal) bothered me not. 11 gallons and $40 later it was time to head to LAX at last. Traffic was light and I was moving at speeds I’m unaccustomed to, speeds at which one false move or mechanical malfunction could murderlate my life in seconds. The stress this knowledge causes is visible in my gnawed fingernails.

There’s not much more to be told, after stressfully circling the terminals a number of times, I decided to park. The flight had been moderately delayed, so the $3 to park was well worth avoiding the circle of insanity. The drive back was uneventful and after dropping the lady off at home, I drove back to USC, uncar’d, and hopped on my bicycle for a much nicer ride.

I thought that was it for the weekend, but then came Easter Sunday. Like the idiot that I am, I forgot that Metrolink is very religious and doesn’t run on Christian holidays. Because of this, my dear lady friend had no way to return to her rightful home in Orange, CA, typically a Metrolink ride away. And so the process began again, this time I decided to be a cool guy and take out the idiotically named “Muranaka”, a Mini Cooper 2.6 miles away. Why the cars are given Japanese or African or whatever names, I have no idea. Muranaka was cool, and coolness comes with a cost, $11/hr instead of $9. Also, I wasn’t the only one desperate for Muranaka, there was only a 2 hour window in which I could take the beast, because some one had reserved it for the rest of the day. Damn car-sharing is popular at USC!

Muranaka’s gas tank was full, but its body was covered in thick layer of grime and dirt. Another rule of car-sharing is that you’re supposed to clean the car if it becomes too dirty, but I’m more forgiving when people break that rule, since, who cares. So after parking my bike, swiping my card, and swinging back home to grab the girl, off to Orange we went. The traffic was light, which means fast, which also means scary. I broke the speed laws many times, and put both our lives in danger, but who cares because you gotta get where you’re going as fast as you can when you’re in a car. 35 minutes later we were in Orange and I was saying good bye, I had to get back by noon because another Zipcar member was expecting Muranaka to be there, and if I was late Zipcar would charge me $50. So with tires squealing I was off in that little Austin Powers car.

Just as soon as I hit the freeway I saw one of the most annoying redundancies known to man. The sea of red brake lights. Yes, I know you are braking and you are braking and you are braking and you are braking … shut up!!! I had 40 minutes to get back to USC and here I was on a grade separated freeway going 0mph. Using transit math, I had to travel 30 miles at 0mph that means I would get Muranaka back just short of never! But hark! The red lights have disappeared, we began to move once again. 5mph, 13mph, 22mph, 40mph, 65mph. Red light, red light, red light, red light… I GET IT. 0mph. After about 35 minutes of this I was passing the Citadel outlet mall in Commerce. I could see the skyscrapers of downtown. I had 5 minutes to get Muranaka back in front of the Jewish fraternity. I saw a break in traffic and gunned it, weaving in and out of cars like Charlize Theron in The Italian Job, my life and lives of others mattered not. I had already grown accustomed to the stress of driving and had numbed myself to the world, I was the center of this universe and everyone else was no different from the bugs splattering on my windshield. At 12:05 I pulled Muranaka in front of the Jewish fraternity, tires still smoking, and in the distance I saw a woman in a dress walking towards the lot. I exited the vehicle, swiped my card, and hopped on my bike as the woman in the dress swiped her card, open the door, and hopped in Muranaka.

I pitied her.