Long known for congested streets and a dearth of parking space, Baltimore City will be getting an environmentally friendly boost from a car sharing program, despite the fact that the parking authority's plans for the initiative have changed since December.
According to Tiffany James, special assistant for the Parking Authority of Baltimore City, the agency in charge of bringing the car sharing project to Baltimore, the decision to create a nonprofit group, Baltimore CarShare, to operate this program has been scrapped. The Parking Authority will turn to private companies and the city expects to see the beginnings of this program in place later this year.
Using a private company is a return to the original conception of the plan, which was first formed in 2006 when the Parking Authority put out a request for proposals to the two major car sharing companies, FlexCar and ZipCar. Only FlexCar expressed interest at the time.
Car sharing was seen as "an extension of public transportation," which is another method to help combat the serious lack of parking evident in many Baltimore neighborhoods, according to James. Car sharing was designed to take cars off street shoulders and the roads, reducing both congestion and carbon emissions.
The city had come to an agreement with FlexCar in 2007 to begin making public cars available for a fee, but the company merged with its competitor, ZipCar, later that year; ZipCar was not interested in taking up the Baltimore project.
The Parking Authority decided to turn inward and create its own non-profit group to make the program available. The city was heavily influenced by the well established PhillyCarShare, a successful non-profit group founded in 2004 in Philadelphia.
As of December 2008, the Parking Authority was planning on going forward with its own non-profit group, Baltimore CarShare. The company planned to charge $4 or $5 per hour to subscribers of the program and would have employed a number of hybrid cars. James was hopeful that the first public cars would be on the road by early 2009.
"We ran into a number of barriers at the beginning of this year," James said. "We were hoping to launch an alpha test with just the Parking Authority and another city agency before expanding citywide to all residents a month or two later. We then ran into some obstacles."
James stressed that these were just routine financial and administrative difficulties associated with start-up companies, especially those connected to city or local governments and not related to the recent economic downturn. The Parking Authority began receiving new interest from ZipCar and other private companies about car sharing.
Now, James said, the Parking Authority is working with ZipCar and other interested companies, most of which are car rental agencies, on a new request for proposals.
"Our pursuit of creating a separate non-profit car sharing organization has been put on hold, but we are still working to bring car sharing to Baltimore . . . We're going to tell them what we're looking for, what we're willing to give, what we want from them - and we're going to build in some of the elements that we were trying to bring with Baltimore CarShare and have them meet these goals."
More than 500 residents have already tentatively registered for the car sharing program, according to James. The initiative is tied closely to Mayor Dixon's plans to make Baltimore a more eco-conscious city, and it has enjoyed much public support.
James pointed out that "things had definitely changed" since December 2008, but not for the worse. The city is remains committed to car sharing, for many reasons, and the Parking Authority believes this partnership with other companies can produce a great benefit to residents of Baltimore because "we've gone back to the Request for proposals approach, but now we know much more."
"It's important that car sharing exists in Baltimore, so that people can live without a car, with one or two fewer cars - it's so much more than just improving the parking situation ... We also see this as a chance to build community, as more people turn to walking, bicycling or taking the bus to their various destinations."
James also spoke about another green initiative that Baltimore residents will see this summer. The city plans to launch three new, free bus routes down to various locations downtown, including the Inner Harbor, Harbor East and Federal Hill.
These new routes would employ a fleet of hybrid buses, and would run as far north as Penn Station, so that by next fall, Hopkins students could have a new, free, eco-friendly way to travel to downtown Baltimore.
