by mattchristensen00 | Jun 16, 2015 |
By Mike Isaac When Trae Vassallo’s children hop in the car to head to their after-school sports practice in the San Francisco Bay Area several times a week, it is not Ms. Vassallo, a full-time working mother of three, who drives them. Nor is it her husband, a nanny or any other caregiver. Instead, Ms. Vassallo, a venture capitalist with her own firm, has scheduled regular rides for her children using Shuddle, a start-up that lets parents book trips around town for their offspring. In Silicon Valley parlance, Shuddle is the Uber for kids. “It’s obviously leveraging the infrastructure that companies like Uber have figured out how to do well,” Ms. Vassallo, a former partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who has invested in Shuddle, said of the start-up. Shuddle is just one of a growing number of services to piggyback on the groundwork laid by Uber, the popular ride-hailing service that lets users request cars with a few taps of their smartphone. Apart from an Uber-like service for the under-16 set, there is now also a service for Bay Area commuters (Chariot), a service for Manhattan (Via) and even a service for vans (Leap Transit). But unlike Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, which are disrupting the transportation market with all-purpose ride-booking services, these new companies focus on specific markets. To read the full article, click...
by mattchristensen00 | Jun 16, 2015 |
By Greg Gardner Maybe car sharing won’t threaten the auto industry after all. Despite forecasts from futurists that millennials aren’t that interested in owning cars and trucks, new vehicle sales are running at levels not seen since the housing bubble of a decade ago. At the same time 1.3 million Americans belonged to some type of car-sharing network at the end of 2014, a 34% increase from 2013, according to the University of California-Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center. In fact, a newish segment of car-share industry is also expanding, renting out your personal vehicle to strangers in much the same way Airbnb.com rents out your residence to travelers, if you’re out of town or on your own vacation. The San Francisco-based vehicle-share program, which launched in 2009, is called Getaround and has expanded this year to Washington DC, Portland, Ore., and Chicago. The simultaneous upswing for auto sales and car -sharing can be partially explained by rethinking some faulty assumptions. To read the full article, click...
by Innovative Mobility Research | May 21, 2015 |
By Steve Elbow | The Capital Times May 19, 2015 Madison BCycle, Trek’s local bikeshare program, is racking up more and more rides per year. In 2014, the program logged 104,274 total rides, up from 63,325 in 2012. But who’s actually using those red bikes? Data compiled by the bikeshare program suggests that BCycle riders are generally white and hold a college degree — and they make a pretty good living. That’s probably not unexpected, given that UW campus BCycle stations are the busiest in the city. But it’s also consistent with data from other cities, reported by Vox, that show that bikeshare programs are disproportionately utilized by the well-heeled, despite the fact that more of the people who depend on bicycles are low-income. Of respondents, 86 percent described themselves as white, and about 87 percent had a college degree. Genderwise, they were split right down the middle. Thirty percent were between 25 and 34 years of age, and 25 percent were between 35 and 44, meaning that over half were between 25 and 44. Seventy-four percent were employed full-time, and 12 percent were full-time students. To read the full article, click...
by mattchristensen00 | May 20, 2015 |
By Crissinda Ponder Editor’s note: Each week, one of Bankrate’s personal finance reporters is sharing a new way to save and chronicling the savings journey. This week, I’m reporting on the experience I had as a car pool participant. Read on to see what happened. If you’re like me, you’re probably not a fan of the daily work commute drama: the accidents that attract slow-driving rubberneckers and make you late to the office, the psychos swerving from lane to lane, the people feeding their face or applying makeup. But having a co-worker along for the ride makes things a little less insufferable. Ready to save some money (and potentially retain your sanity)? Maybe it’s time to try carpooling. To read more about the Savings Challenge, click...
by mattchristensen00 | May 16, 2015 |
By Chris Johns Car share programs, initially geared toward urban professionals looking to utilize vehicles for quick errands, are making stronger bids for the business market by appealing to companies’ environmental sensibilities as well as their bottom line. While limos and taxis might still be the gold standard for business travellers to get around town, share programs that offer people ways to customize auto rentals for a few hours or even a few minutes are gaining in popularitywith businesses and business travellers, and the trend shows no signs of abating. The convenience, flexibility and low cost compared to car ownership are what attracted Vancouver-based marketing director Wendy Underwood to join both Zipcar, the world’s largest car share program, and Car2Go, another major player, several years ago. “We live in the city so driving for us is not something we need to do every day,” she explains. “One of my clients is out in Abbotsford, which is a good hour drive, so I use it for them. The last time I was in Toronto, I had to go out to Mississauga to meet with a client, so I got a Zipcar for that. “Otherwise I’d have to rent … and that would mean an extra trip downtown to pick up the car and then I’d have to try and find parking at the hotel or have them park it and that’s another $30 a night. This way I can pick one up just about anywhere and drop it back without having to worry about some guy coming out to check the kilometres or anything.” To read the full article, click...
