“According to a new study by the American Public Transportation Association (which, yes, has an interest in the results), the average public transportation rider can save $9,242 a year by ditching a car.”
The post includes APTA’s news release on how the stats were deduced. And you can check out their online calculator to ascertain how much you’d save personally.
Chicago fares well in the rankings among cities: We’re fourth in savings at averages of $946 monthly and $11,357 annually. New York, Boston, and San Francisco are ranked first, second, and third.
Blanco adds:
“A car-sharing option was not included in the APTA model, but it’s easy enough to see that going by bus and rail most days and using the savings to rent a car when needed certainly puts one ahead financially, if public transit is a viable option.”
That option certainly extends to I-GO, which offers a joint transit smart card with the CTA. We estimate that members who’ve sold a car or shed one in switching to car sharing can save as much as $5,000 a year in reduced transportation expenses.
And in this economy, those savings can mean quite a lot for many of us.
Minneapolis-St. Paul’s Star-Tribune gives some love this week to HOURCAR, our fellow regional non-profit car-sharing pals in the Twin Cities.
HOURCAR is a more modestly scaled endeavor than I-GO, but they’ve quietly been making steady progress in introducing Minnesotans to car sharing. And we share a lot in common with them. HOURCAR was launched by the St. Paul non-profit org Neighborhood Energy Connection (NEC), which pursues many of the same aims as CNT Energy, a division of the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), the non-profit which launched I-GO in 2002. Both help consumers obtain information and services they need to control energy costs and reduce their carbon footprint.
And if you’re an I-GO member traveling to the Twin Cities, you can join HOURCAR for free!
And then there’s CUB Energy Saver, a multi-pronged initiative of the Illinois non-profit Citizens Utility Board that helps local residents save money on bills, manage energy use, and team up with friends and neighbors to make their communities more energy-efficient. The CUB Energy Saver site is a pretty cool social-media-styled online app that lets you configure and monitor your energy use, join groups, write blog posts, get updates on events, and more. It’s very well designed, we must say. Kudos to CUB on this one. We encourage you to check it out for yourself. When you sign up (for free), they’ll even send you a free compact fluorescent light bulb.
I-GO CEO Sharon Feigon represented I-GO Car Sharing at the Transportation Research Board’s 89th annual meeting this week in Washington, D.C. The event surveys all transportation modes, with more than 3,000 presentations in nearly 600 sessions addressing topics of interest to policy makers, administrators, practitioners, researchers, and representatives of government, industry, and academic institutions.
On Wednesday, Jan. 13, Sharon cochaired the Shared Vehicle Committee. She also emailed us this link to a Megan McConville post on TheCityFix.com, an online resource for sustainable transport news, advocacy and “best practice” solutions from around the world. The blog is produced by EMBARQ – The World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport, a non-profit organization that works with cities in the developing world to catalyze and help implement sustainable solutions to problems of urban mobility.
McConville reports on a session about car sharing and bike sharing. Among the more interesting highlights:
An estimated 9 to 13 vehicles are removed from the road for each car sharing vehicle deployed.
Connectivity to public transit, the age of the transit station, and the average employment rate had a positive impact on car-sharing market share.
There are 100 bike-sharing programs in 125 cities with more than 140,000 bikes, with another 45 planned in 22 countries in 2010. (Pictured at right: Washington D.C.’s SmartBike DC bike-share program.)
The next stage for bike sharing involves flexible/mobile docking stations, smart card integration with other transportation modes, and advanced technologies including GPS, touchscreen kiosks, and e-bikes.
We’d love to see that sort of high-tech integration in Chicago. I-GO, for its part, already has a joint smart card with the CTA, enabling access to both our fleet of cars and CTA buses and trains. But we hope that’s just the start of even more exciting multi-modal systems to come.
Like to eat well? Have we got an incentive for you.
I-GO will award two gift certificates — for savory, veg-a-licious edibles (like the shiitake-stuffed pot stickers pictured at right) at Evanton’s estimable Blind Faith Café and from truffle and caramel specialist Katherine Anne Confections — to the I-GO member who racks up the most referrals this month.
All you have to do is tell your friends, family, and colleagues to join I-GO. For every approved applicant who names you as the referring member on their application form, we’ll add $20 in free driving credit to your account, and if you have the highest tally from now through January 31 you’ll also be the proud, appetite-stoked recipient of a $25 gift certificate for Blind Faith Café and a $30 gift certificate for Katherine Anne Confections.
This is just the start of a monthly contest campaign we’re launching this month. Every month we’ll be giving out prizes from local businesses, so be sure to check our blog and Facebook page for new contests.
This week, our fleet team will be moving vehicles into the following locations:
CHICAGO
1809 E. 71st St.: 2006 silver Scion xB, vehicle #4479
1313 E. 60th St.: 2007 blue Toyota Prius, vehicle #4563
5500 S. Greenwood St.: 2009 gray Honda Fit, vehicle #4588
3201 S. State St.: 2008 red Honda Element, vehicle #4560
800 S. Clark St.: 2009 gray Honda CR-V, vehicle #4604
929 N. Wells St.: 2009 silver Honda CR-V, vehicle #4442
2825 N. Halsted St.: 2007 orange Honda Fit, vehicle #4518
7531 N. Clark St., 2009 silver Honda Odyssey, vehicle #4440
EVANSTON
504 South Blvd.: 2006 red Scion xB, vehicle #4485
Members will be able to search for these vehicles after logging into our reservation system. They will also be added to the map on our Car Locations page.
At our recent holiday party — attended by nearly 500 car-sharing fans — we asked I-GO members why they use our service and what they like most about it. We also took the opportunity to announce some impressive statistics on how much money our members saved and how many metric tons of CO2 they helped reduce this past year. We can all be quite proud of our shrinking carbon footprint.
We’re getting some fun responses to our current Facebook contest: Write the best holiday song parody about I-GO and win $30 in free driving credits.
Stephanie Kollman submitted this catchy, little ditty:
“It’s beginning to look a lot like I-GO
Everywhere I go!
There’s a car near Aunt Bea’s hotel,
At the grocery store as well,
Drive Grandma around and she won’t mind the snow!…
It’s beginning to look a lot like I-GO!
Soon the fun will start,
And the thing that will make you sing
Is the wind that will not sting
Yet you do your part!”
Awww. So cute. Care to try it yourself? If you’re not already a fan of our Facebook page, join the club and give us your best Johnny Mathis impersonation. Those 30 bucks of free driving in an I-GO car sure beat a one-horse open sleigh when it’s this cold outside, that’s for sure.
Nobody out there needs to be told times are tough. And while that’s hardly the marketing slogan of the year, we can say this unequivocally: car sharing saves bucks. Big time. Some folks report saving up to four or five thou a year after selling a car and switching to car sharing and public transit. (Good thing we offer a combo smart card with the CTA.)
Most of us are also hacking our holiday shopping budgets to bits this season. (Sorry, retailers, we feel your pain.) But giving someone an I-GO membership really is that gift that keeps on giving. And, hey, that gift recipient may as well be yourself, too. Treat yourself. You deserve it.
With all this in mind, we’re offering a special holiday discount: Join I-GO for just $25 (covers the first year of membership) and get three free hours of driving. Just use the promo code HOLIDAY2009 on the application form. And we’re also giving $25 in driving credits to every member who refers a new, approved applicant. We also offer gift certificates.
This month we are in the process of adding I-PASS transponders to lots of I-GO cars. All suburban vehicles will be equipped with I-PASS transponders, and our fleet team has carefully selected vehicles across Chicago to ensure at least one vehicle in each neighborhood is similarly equipped.
To find the cars with I-PASS in our fleet, members can search for them in the Amenities section of our online reservation system after logging in. We have placed a bright orange sticker in each I-PASS-equipped vehicle, notifying members not to use their own I-PASS or pay the tolls themselves.
The I-PASS charges will be added to the member’s invoice at the end of the month. It’s a great deal for all: using our I-PASS is significantly cheaper than paying tolls with cash. No vehicle registered with the Illinois Tollway will receive a violation, so you can enjoy open road tolling with peace of mind.
I-GO threw a holiday bash for its members and their guests Thurs., Dec. 3, at the Merchandise Mart. Perched on the 15th floor, in a sleek space with a dramatic, panoramic view of the Chicago River below, the merrymakers—at least 500 by our count—got their fill of holiday cheer, I-GO style.
A sumptious buffet was provided by an eclectic variety of local culinary faves, including Soul Vegetarian East, Hannah’s Bretzel, Bistro Campagne, Fruit Flowers, Raw Creations, Provenance Food & Wine, and Piece Brewery & Pizzeria. Lucky winners also scooped up fab raffle prizes furnished by Patagonia, the Joffrey Ballet, Lookingglass Theatre, Random House Audio, and Salon Moka.
I-GO CEO Sharon Feigon spoke about the organization’s past year of accomplishments and gave a preview of highlights to come in 2010—most tantalizingly: making the Chicago Card Plus/I-GO Card available to I-GO’s entire membership. The joint smartcard was a pilot program created by the CTA and I-GO in early 2009.
I-GO presented its Volunteers of the Year Award to Taica Shariee and Carl Westburg, who helped us spread the word on I-GO and car sharing at numerous community events in 2009. Thank you, Taica and Carl!
Guests left with gift bags made from recycled material provided by Green Depot. Many continued their night by browsing at the Merchandise Mart’s One of a Kind Show & Sale, courtesy of free passes provided by the Mart.
Thanks to all who came and made the night such a success!
