Car Sharing Zips Beyond Downtown

Stefanie Lapetina is the type of person New Haven is seeking to attract: She lives in the city, works here, and instead of owning a car rides her bike or takes the Yale shuttle.

But she admits that when it’s cold, trying to navigate the city makes her consider buying a car.

“In the winter it’s hard,” said Lapetina, who lives on Mechanic Street. ​“It makes me feel a little trapped.”

Lapetina (pictured) has tried to bridge that gap with a membership in the car-sharing service Zipcar. But the limited service in town is more convenient to where she works at the Yale School of Medicine than to where she lives. If she wants to take a Zipcar at night, she first takes Uber to a pick-up location near Science Hill, and when she returns the car, takes an Uber back home.

But in the next two weeks, according to city Parking Authority COO Sammy Parry and Doug Hausladen, the city’s transit chief, people like Lapetina, who are trying to resist the lure of car ownership, will have a new option. The pair announced Monday night that the Zipcar car-sharing company will expand from its downtown and Yale-centric locations out into the city’s neighborhoods, starting with the city-owned surface lot at State and Mechanic streets. Two of the lot’s 35 spaces will be reserved for Zipcars.

The parking authority currently manages four garages — Union Station Air Rights Garage, Crown Street and Temple Street — that already have two Zipcars apiece. But between those garages and the Zipcar locations that belong to Yale, Southern Connecticut State University and Yale-New Haven Hospital, most of the cars are downtown, and difficult to reach for most New Haveners.

Hausladen said the parking authority (which he runs along with the city’s transportation department) has seven garages in all and manages more than a dozen surface lots — meaning space to expand Zipcar.

“We were really excited to look at the map of Zipcar and to see our assets and to see how that overlaid with the map of Zipcar users,” Hausladen said. ​“The feedback we got today at the East Rock Management Team Meeting was warming, very positive, and exactly what we hoped for.”

Parry (pictured at right) said the authority plans to look next at bringing the service to the surface lot at Whalley Avenue and Blake Street in Westville Village.

“We have a number of surface parking lots in our portfolio, and we do plan to explore more, so we would love feedback from residents if they know of any surface parking lots or locations that they think Zipcar should expand to,” Hausladen added. ​“We were hoping to get it on the [Zipcars] on the street; however the logistics of moving the car for street sweeping and snow plowing just weren’t going to work out.”

Lapetina said she would certainly get a lot more use out of her membership if the service were available closer to where she lives. She predicted that the 232-apartment State Street Lofts complex coming to East Rock’s Goatville section will increase Zipcar demand.

Hausladen (pictured at left in the photo) said in addition to the parking authority lots, officials are talking with the city’s library system and the regional library system as well as the housing authority as a way to further spread the use of the service.

“With a lot of the improvements coming on line — real-time GPS on buses, new fare boxes and passenger counters — to the CT Transit network, it’s about to get a lot easier to think outside the car and to just drop your car ownership as a status,” he said. ​“We’re trying to think of other ways to get out there, and get to places where people need it. Zipcars are great options if you’re a normal bus customer and one day your work is taking you to Newington. Zipcar is a great opportunity to expand your mobility options.”