(Photo: Paper and pen not included. Credit: Zipcar.)

Little did I know when I opined on the absurdity of life last week that things would just get stranger come the weekend. They did for Devyn and me, courtesy of a 35-mile Zipcar drive through the western hinterland, in the form of our accidental attendance at a free outdoor Davy Jones concert in Geneva.

Of Monkees and Marcia Brady fame, yes, that Davy Jones. We did what you’d probably have done, too. We stayed to hear “I’m a Believer” and then booked for all we were worth.

Zipcar made that escape easier. Having been an occasional user (well ok, passenger, what with that whole never having learned to drive thing and all) of both of Chicago’s car sharing services over the past two months, the for-profit Zipcar’s ease of use is what stands out most.

Unfortunately, my day job chooses the local nonprofit I-GO as their car sharing service of choice. Our typical booking goes something like this:

1. Walk to dark corner in Millennium Park Parking Garage.
2. Tap smart card on windshield card reader.
3. Tap smart card again on windshield card reader.
4. Hold now merely alleged smart card firmly against reader for 60 seconds while cursing and tapping foot until car finally unlocks.
5. Put smart card away.
6. Reach into glove compartment and fumble for key.
7. Reach into glove compartment and fumble for book of paper trip receipts and pen.
8. Pray ceiling light works.
9. Write down gas level, odometer mileage, member number, card number, date, and time.
10. Bitch that you’re gonna be late now.
11. Start trip.
12. Ignore smart card and fumble with key to lock and unlock car for duration of trip.
13. End trip.
14. Write down gas level, odometer mileage, date, and time.
15. Pray that smart card locks car within 60 seconds of repeated tapping.
16. Complain to colleagues for not choosing Zipcar.

Um, paper and pen? What year is this, 1996? Why on earth should I have to write down the details of a reservation that I-GO already has recorded in its booking system? Moreover, what good is a smart card that turns dumb the moment you start your trip?

At home, Devyn’s a Zipcar member. Here’s how our weekend Zipcar jaunts have panned out:

1. Walk to well-lit above ground garage.
2. Tap smart card on windshield card reader.
3. Enter instantly unlocking car.
4. Find key permanently hanging from steering wheel.
5. Start car and drive away.
6. Use smart card to lock and unlock car during trip.
7. End trip.
8. Lock car instantly with smart card.
9. Go home.

Unlike I-GO, Zipcar keeps track of your use of the car automatically, via a radio-frequency identification (RFID) system, so there’s no paperwork required. At all. As any automated car-sharing service should be in 2006. Or even any need to fumble with keys outside the car.

Basically, all you need do is remember your smart card and Zipcar takes care of the rest. Any I-GO member who doesn’t have a lot of time to waste, especially during the workday, can probably commiserate with the experience of arriving for your reservation without something to write with and not finding a pen in the car. Or forgetting to fill out the duplicative but necessary paperwork at the end of your trip. Or, frankly, just not wanting to be bothered with it.

And you shouldn’t have to be.

In August, when I first expressed my preference for Zipcar over I-GO, I favored the for-profit service because of its wide choice of vehicles versus I-GO’s restrictive fleet of Hondas (and primarily Civics, at that). Unfortunately, my past two months of additional experience with I-GO haven’t done anything to sway my opinion any closer towards that service. And I really have tried to like it. Done my best. Just can’t stand it. I’d simply like a little more modern technology in my day-to-day, thanks.

Pardon me now if I duck. When I compared the two car-sharing services in August, I was summarily dressed down by an I-GO staffer for not supporting the local non-profit service, on the shaky assumption that being a nonprofit somehow put them above reproach.

But should any I-GO staffers still be reading, know that I do welcome your thoughts on this posting. This time, though, why not switch it up a little and snail mail me?

For full effect, I suggest writing your rebuttal on the back of a trip receipt from the passenger seat of the Matrix you’ve so cleverly stowed in perhaps the darkest corner of the Millennium Park Parking Garage. Extra points if you find a pen in the car. Or if the car lets you in in the first place.

Zipcar, I’m a believer.

(Photo: Would you share this car? Credit: Zipcar.)

Sometimes it’s hard to be a conservation-minded urbanist. Especially when you’re faced with a choice between local car-sharing services I-GO and Zipcar. Such was the dilemma last week for Devyn, my annoyingly self-doubting, enormously gifted architectural photo-essayist boyfriend.

Devyn had a long history of car trips before we hooked up last year, and though I’m a committed transit user, it’s not like I ever intend to visit, say, Ikea, on the RTA. (Having commuted to scum–er–Schaumburg from the city before for work, I know how sucky that trip is). So every now and then, when the idea of Swedish furniture, or the Indiana Dunes, or the Milwaukee Art Museum rears its head, we’ve tended to rent a car. But that gets expensive, and, especially downtown, you’re at the mercy of the hours and locations of the few car rental firms that are nearby and open on weekends. Beyond Enterprise, those pickings are slim.

So we’d been toying with the idea of joining I-GO for awhile. Sponsored by the groovy, civic-minded, nonprofit Center for Neighborhood Technology, I-GO was the first car-sharing service to hit the streets of Hogtown. As with most car-sharing services, I-GO offers a flat membership fee, low hourly rates, and no hassles of additional insurance riders or filling up the gas tank on your own dime (insurance is included in membership fees and a company credit card is stowed in every car to pay for gas). It seemed too good to be true.

And for us, it was. When we actually compared I-GO to the new, for-profit national service, Zipcar, we were surprised to learn that the commercial service actually offered us a better deal.

Our only car trips tend to be medium-distance ones, out of the city, where transit fears to tread. Take Ikea. Fifty miles round-trip from our downtown abodes, a trip to the Swedish wonderland and back, with side trips and lunch thrown in, generally requires a car for six to eight hours. With I-GO’s Standard plan ($6/hour + .50/mile), we would pay at least $60. The All Day plan with 200 free miles also would cost $60. The supposedly more attractive Standard Plus plan ($8.25/hour + .50/mile, with 25 free miles) would set us back at least $62. That’s on top of a $75 membership fee and $25 annual maintenance fee. I-GO does offer frequent-driver plans, but those require membership fees of between $80 and a whopping $725.

Worse, your choice of car with I-GO is a Honda Civic. However, if you’d prefer, you can also rent a…Honda Civic. In fact, except for a few exceptions, I-GO’s fleet is comprised almost exclusively of Honda Civics. The Civic-heavy fleet was apparently chosen due to the mileage benefits of the car. But in my book, although I-GO’s cars are located all over the city, one choice is no choice at all.

Um, no sale.

With Zipcar’s standard plan ($9/hour + .30/mile, with 125 free miles), that Ikea trip of ours would begin at $54. And unless we brought the car back late, it would stay there. True, other rates are a bit higher, with a $50 annual fee and a $66 daily rate. But Devyn and I were still left wondering why the free mileage offered by I-GO was so paltry compared to Zipcar. Essentially, the I-GO pricing penalizes you for actually using the car, at least for anything more than short trips–the trips you could probably make more cheaply in a taxi, anyway.

Moreover, Zipcar’s higher incremental costs are more than made up for in one, screaming factor: choice. Zipcar offers one–a big one. Realizing that not all car trips are undertaken for the same reasons, Zipcar offers a variety of cars, from roomy, freight-hauling SUVs, to “coolness factor” cars like Minis and Mustangs, perfect for showing up in at that far-suburban high-school reunion. Right now, Zipcars are thinner on the ground than I-GO vehicles. But according to the Zipcar website, that will change as the for-profit company continues an aggressive local expansion strategy.

Now, obviously, I won’t be driving any of these automobiles. I, as always, remain the ultimate car-sharer, unwavering in my lifelong intention never to learn how to drive, preferring to take transit or read the map for my significant other from the passenger seat. But if I’m going to be ferried about Chicagoland on special occasions in an automobile, I might as well do it (as might we all):

a.) in style; and
b.) on the cheap.

Fuel efficiency aside, there’s something to be said about choice: you really ought to offer one. Devyn and I will be damned if I-GO expects us to plant our bearish butts into a boring old Honda Civic while paying a premium for the privelege. We’re both big supporters of the environmental benefits of car sharing, which a membership in Zipcar still offers. We’d just rather pull up to Ikea in a Scion.

It’s cooler. With Zipcar it’s cheaper. And, let’s face it, how much flat-packed Swedish furniture can you really fit in a Civic, anyway?

Suffer.

That’s why God invented public transport. My heart does not bleed for you. You want to pay $289 a month to bring your car down here and needlessly congest my neighborhood streets? Go right ahead. My city’s coffers — which you fill up on a daily basis with the overpriced parking fees you pay — love your money.

This heartening recent Sun-Times article proves that Yours Truly is not the only brave soul to call Chicago home without the added burden of owning a car. Props go especially to one interviewee who says about her former $60,000 Lexus,

“But how could I possibly justify that to drive a mile and park in my garage for almost $300? It just doesn’t make sense.”