Thomas MacMillan Photo
Zipcars are going citywide, as long as aldermen say OK.
Zipcar, the hourly car rental outfit, currently has cars only on the Yale campus. Pending approval of a four-party agreement by the Board of Aldermen, Zipcars will be appearing at Union Station and a Crown Street parking garage.
The point of Zipcars is to enable citydwellers to avoid owning cars and to keep the air cleaner. People sign up for accounts with ZIpcar, then use the cars when they need them, to shop, say, or take a day trip out of town.
The Board of Aldermen received the proposal at its meeting last week. The matter now heads to the City Services and Environmental Policy Committee. Mike Piscitelli, head of the traffic and parking department, said he hopes to have the Zipcars in place by the fall.
The proposed agreement is among Zipcar, Yale University, the city of New Haven, and the New Haven Parking Authority. The parking authority will garage the vehicles and Yale will provide maintenance work, Piscitelli said. The city will provide marketing support. No city dollars are requested. Read the proposed agreement here.
Piscitelli said Zipcar has been operating successfully on the Yale campus for three years. The company has cars parked at various locations, where members of the public with Zipcar accounts can pick up the cars for short rentals. The cars, many of which are hybrid vehicles, are available by the day or by the hour.
Zipcar has 26 vehicles on the Yale campus, according to the company’s website. If the four-party agreement is approved, two cars will be added at Union Station, and two on Crown Street, Piscitelli said. He said the deal has been in the works for about a year.
Piscitelli said the plan is a good one for the city, which will benefit from less congestion and less pollution. If Zipcar use increases, it may mean fewer downtown residents will have to own and store cars. That could also save people money, Piscitelli noted.
Piscitelli said having cars at Union Station may benefit people who need to visit the New Haven area on business. For example, instead of driving up from New York City to Branford for a meeting, a New Yorker could just take the train to New Haven and hop in a Zipcar from there.
Piscitelli put the agreement up for “unanimous consent” when he submitted it to the Board of Aldermen last Monday. If aldermen had agreed, that would have meant instant approval, without going through the committee process. But in a meeting before the full board meeting, Hill Alderman Jorge Perez (pictured) objected that the matter was put on the agenda at the last minute before he or other aldermen had a chance to review it or learn about what commitments the city is supposed to make.
Piscitelli said he had been hoping for speedy approval in order to have the Zipcars in place by September. But the matter is “not pressing,” he told Perez.
Perez said he would block unanimous consent. “I want to know what we’re committing to,” he said.
The City Services and Environmental Policy Committee will take up the matter at its next meeting.