It’s been a long time since I’ve written about cars & bicycles, and some of you are saying great, we’ve heard enough about that from you. So let me begin by saying I now own a car, in fact I now own two cars. Since I married an English lady I have a car in England & a car here.
So I am not preaching from a point of sainthood. I own cars; I use cars, and yet I was amused & informed by the following sign I saw in a New York City subway. We spend 320 hours a year making love. We spend 420 hours a year looking for a parking spot. What’s wrong with this picture?
The ad was put up by a car sharing firm. As all of you know, there is a car sharing firm in our town, in Traverse City, but it is great to know that such schemes are springing up everywhere.
I assume all of you know about car sharing. The name describes the experience. All of us know that it is massively expensive to own a car and many families own two or three cars. Can’t we cut down on cars? We can. We can join a car sharing company. We pay an annual fee and then a small sum every time we use the car.
Such schemes encourage people to use other means of transportation if they can. Such schemes make clear how much cars cost when we do choose to use them. Car sharing makes economic sense and it will also encourage people to walk more often, use public transportation more often.
Before I end I must explain the quote I opened with. Of course the numbers are estimates: 320 hours a year making love, 420 hours a week looking for a parking spot, but if anything, in New York City they underestimated the number of hours spent looking for a parking spot. I grew up in New York City and I remember many-many nights, after a date, or after a show, spending at least an hour circling & circling, looking for a parking spot. I vividly remember the night I almost killed someone because, after an hour of circling around block after block, I thought I saw a spot and cut a corner & almost killed someone.
That was it for that night. I pulled into a parking lot and paid fifteen dollars to park overnight.
I cannot count the number of nights my brother-in-law, who still lives in New York city, chose not to go out at night because he had found a parking spot good for the next day and he wasn’t going to move the car & risk fruitless hours looking for another parking spot.
Car sharing is the wave of the future, and maybe it heralds a time when we will share other expensive items, items we all use but use infrequently.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein