Going Car Light and Car Free

Today is a big car oriented day for our friends at the New York Times. The first story is about a city sponsored car sharing service in Hoboken, NJ. In a city with too many cars, it seems odd that adding cars would improve things, but at first glance that seems to be the case. The convenience of cars seems to be wearing thin with the cost of ownership causing being more than its worth. Author Tom Vanderbilt (who I've feature in past posts) says it's like the difference between owning your music and streaming it. Much more convenient. Hoboken is still more urban than say where I live.

If I could find a way to create a fractional car ownership business along the lines of NetJets I'd be thrilled.

The other story is the rise of tricycles in New York City. People are increasingly using tricycles meant for hauling things to carry their kids and run errands in New York City. It is again the glamour moms driving this. No pun intended. It makes a lot of sense, as I've investigated getting a pull cart for my bicycle to run errands. At this point, a new set of panniers will probably do the trick.

The effective range of bicycling is probably 4 - 8 miles, Manhattan is ideally sized for this kind of use. We'll see what happens in the winter. But I'm glad that people are doing it now. What we need is Tricycle sharing program. ZipTrike anyone?