Zip Car vs. I-Go

Sorry, yet another car thread.

From time to time I need use of a small pickup truck (like today would be really nice) for rehabbing and landscaping needs.

Looks like Zip-car has a pickup at Milwaukee/Western/Armitage, and I-Go at Chicago and Damen, which are roughly equidistant.

My main question-- there are very few of this type of vehicle available from either agency, and it's really the only reason I would sign up-- are the vehicles you want generally available when you need them? Or are there frequent times when everything is checked out?

Also-- Yelp has a few reviews suggesting the I-Go experience has really tanked over the last year-- have people found this?

Thanks.

(And please no obligatory mention of the trucks at Home Depot or Menard's-- you can't use them unless you currently have car insurance.)

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Permalink Reply by Greg Borzo on May 20, 2012 at 6:24am

The Center for Neighborhood Technology is not only a nonprofit but also one of the country's most innovative and important think tanks and consulting firms for sustainability, alternative forms of transportation, housing and progressive social issues. Everytime you use an I-Go car you support this wonderful work. Case closed.

Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on May 20, 2012 at 9:01am

Keep pelting I-Go and Zipcar with requests to add a location near you with a vehicle type that would  be useful to you.  I and a few others kept doing it with I-Go and finally got our location.  It finally got popular enough that we now have a 2nd location in the neighborhood. Demand keeps growing, so maybe we can get a 3rd car before long.

It doesn't cost anything to keep sending those emails.  If you're not doing it already, now's a good time to start.

h' said:

Great sentiment. The first car-sharing concern that places a cargo vehicle (truck/van) within 2 miles of my home gets my membership for life.  I can always opt for neither if they're only interested in serving certain parts of town.

Jeff K said:

Go local!! I-Go is local and non-profit.

You can always defect if you don't like the service. But I always give preference to the home-grown option.

PS

I have used both I-Go and Zipcar and I was happy with both.

Permalink Reply by Ken Lee on May 20, 2012 at 3:32pm

I'm a I-Go member and I'm pretty happy with the availability of vehicles. I have used both the Lincoln Square Element and Tundra in addition to hybrid sedans - they are very handy vehicles. I chose I-Go over Zipcar because they are green as can be. Having said that, their car maintenance and upkeep could be better but I'm pretty forgiving of a local non-profit. Go I-Go!

Permalink Reply by Thunder Snow on July 3, 2012 at 1:04am

Car sharing makes the most sense in high density neighborhoods, with many nearby apartment dwellers who are car-free.  Lakeshore north side neighborhoods like Lakeview, Edgewater, Uptown & Rogers Park fit the bill, or areas like Wicker Park, Bucktown the Loop or Logan Square, as do university areas like Hyde Park & Evanston (which have many car-free students nearby).  A car-share parked in a low density residential neighborhood, or a neighborhood without many car-free residents, which may not get used for days between members, makes less economic/usability sense to a car-share organization, than a car in a high density area, that may get used 18-20 hours each day by a half dozen different members.

I-Go, being an ideologically-driven nonprofit (as opposed to Zipcar, which is strictly a for-profit venture) is a little more proactive in experimentally placing cars in somewhat unlikely places like Berwyn, Skokie or Beverly.  To me, these areas don't fit the density or car-free requirement, and I'd be interested to know if they get much use.  I know the I-Go that was parked at the Wilmette Linden Street L station last year finally got yanked for lack of usage.

And by and large, Chicago's south and west sides are still neglected and underserved by most services, not just car-sharing.

Car-shares for I-Go & Zipcar often tend to be located near L stops.  I think for you, living outside the trendy high density areas of the city, car-sharing is probably a CTA ride or bike ride away, rather than a walk to the corner. 

In my area of Evanston, with a huge car-free student population, I've got 3 I-Go cars and 4 Zipcars within a 2-block walk, but I bicycle or take the L to car-shares if I need something specific: such as, for hauling furniture or a larger vehicle for many passengers, a type that I can't find in my own neighborhood.  There's a Prius parked in (naturally) the nearby Whole Foods parking lot which is useful if you bought too many groceries to easily carry home; the $3.50 for the 30 minute trip home and back is cheaper and faster than calling a taxi. 

Permalink Reply by David on July 3, 2012 at 3:38am

Thunder Snow said:

Car sharing makes the most sense in high density neighborhoods, with many nearby apartment dwellers who are car-free.

Well, that and a relatively high level of disposable income. There's lots of places with higher car-free population density than Evanston, but it's the high wealth levels in Evanston that give you so many car share options (not to mention the Whole Foods). I-go may be experimenting with cars in Skokie, but they aren't experimenting in Washington Park.

I-Go is non-profit, but they still need to meet a payroll and their vehicle distribution seems to follow pretty much the exact same economic criteria as ZipCar.

Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on July 3, 2012 at 4:44am

I-Go is now in Berwyn, South Shore, Beverly and Pilsen - not all high density areas, not all affluent.

Permalink Reply by Thunder Snow on July 3, 2012 at 6:23am

You're right, folks in Washington Park who are car-free probably can't afford car sharing, even at $6 or $7 an hour, which is likely why both organizations haven't yet put cars in that neighborhood.  I-Go's ideological underpinnings are found in the types of cars they use (all hybrids or pure electric) vs. Zipcar's tendency toward fancier show cars like Mini convertibles and Saabs, which may not get the gas mileage of a hybrid.  And I think I-Go at least tries to put cars in more unlikely areas than Zipcar, like the aforementioned Beverly, Skokie, Berwyn, Bronzeville and so on.  At the same time, they both compete for market share and often copy each other's locations, in the same way a Trader Joe's is often near another grocery store.

For me, the attraction is the computerized convenience of car sharing vs. traditional car rental.  I can book a car share on a moment's notice with nothing more than my cell phone, as opposed to filling out paperwork for a half hour at Hertz or Enterprise.  And I can grab or return car share vehicles at off hours, not just when a rental office is open.  Add that to the short rental times I can get with car sharing--down to a half hour, if need be--and car sharing serves a very good purpose for me.  The downside, of course, is that car shares are always round trip; you have to bring the car back to where you found it (unlike our upcoming bike share, where you can ride a bike from your neighborhood to the Loop and drop it off near your work).

David wrote:

Well, that and a relatively high level of disposable income. There's lots of places with higher car-free population density than Evanston, but it's the high wealth levels in Evanston that give you so many car share options (not to mention the Whole Foods). I-go may be experimenting with cars in Skokie, but they aren't experimenting in Washington Park.

I-Go is non-profit, but they still need to meet a payroll and their vehicle distribution seems to follow pretty much the exact same economic criteria as ZipCar.

Permalink Reply by Thunder Snow on July 3, 2012 at 7:31am

I stand corrected, h'. I don't know exactly where you live, only that it's somewhere on the Southwest Side.  I've never lived anywhere on the South or Southwest Sides and am pretty ignorant of what's around there.  I ride the Green Line to the University of Chicago regularly and the areas I pass through have huge swaths of nothingness for blocks and blocks, likely remnants of the 1968 riots. I've always thought the Southwest Side was mostly rows of bungalows and 2-flats, as that's what I've seen in Bridgeport. And I would have thought areas like the Sheridan Road highrises on the North Side would have the city's highest population density.  Live and learn.

Permalink Reply by David on July 3, 2012 at 7:33am

TS and I haven't really been dotting all the i's so, to be precise, I'm suggesting that car share depends on a core car-less population with middle-class or above wealth levels.   TS is correct that a car-less population correlates with a certain level of density, but my point was that disposable income levels trump that. 

Of the areas you mention, take Pilsen for example.   Density is definitely higher than average for Chicago and has an average household net worth of $280K, which isn't shabby at all.   I wouldn't call the area "affluent", but there's definitely a reasonably-sized middle-class population.  And yet, while density is much higher than Evanston, car share availability is much higher in (East) Evanston because disposable income levels are much higher.

My main point is that car share isn't designed to serve the transportation needs of the poor.  And the relative paucity of availability on the south and west sides isn't because of neglect of the car share companies, but largely because the economic demographics of the area don't fit the consumer profile necessary to support the business model.

Anne Alt said:

I-Go is now in Berwyn, South Shore, Beverly and Pilsen - not all high density areas, not all affluent.

Permalink Reply by Liz on July 3, 2012 at 9:10am

http://www.cityofchicago.org/dam/city/depts/doit/general/GIS/Chicag...

http://www.cityofchicago.org/dam/city/depts/doit/general/GIS/Chicag...

The areas on the northside have much smaller (area wise) tracks than the southwest side, so when you looks at the distribution map it can be deceiving.  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindfrieze/4037618743/sizes/o/in/photo...

Permalink Reply by Sarah D. on January 10, 2013 at 9:30pm

I-Go has been celebrating - quite publicly, with some great events - their 10-year anniversary. There was even a citywide official I-Go carsharing day in December. 

http://www.igocars.org/news/

I am a member of both I-Go and Zip, but rarely Zip - I like the I-GO model better even if the zip cars and phone/email/mobile interfaces are fancier. 


h' 1.0 said:

I thought I would revisit this considering the active thread about Zip-car being acquired by Avis.

Anyone know if there's a Richard Kosmacher with I-Go still? I last heard from him last May 31.

Still no cars in or near Little Village.  Haven't really heard much about I-Go for about 9 months or so.

h' 1.0 said:

Follow-up: after making a bunch of noise about wanting to place a vehicle near me, me scouting out an appropriate location, passing along others' info that said they would use a car in that location . . . my contact at I-Go seems to be disappeared permanently.

Final (?) tally:
Zip Car: 0 (no response at all)

i-Go: -1 for wasting my time with zero results and dropped communication.

Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on January 11, 2013 at 4:00am

Yes, Richard Kosmacher is still with I-Go.  I just sent an inquiry in response to a message I got about changes to Beverly locations.  We had one location (Ridge Park).  Last year they added a second location (Beverly Unitarian Church, otherwise known as the Irish castle).  The people using I-Go the most are apparently closer to the Irish castle location, so usage has gone down a lot at Ridge Park (much closer to me).  They just removed the Ridge Park location, so now we're back to one location in my 'hood - a mile away from my house instead of 2 blocks away.  :(

The response came from Richard Kosmacher.  Ridge Park was a mixed bag - lots of parking conflicts with park users who didn't respect the reserved space.  He said they have no plans right now for a new second location, but might add a second car at the church if the car there (usually unavailable when I need it) doesn't meet demand.  :(

h' 1.0 said:

I thought I would revisit this considering the active thread about Zip-car being acquired by Avis.

Anyone know if there's a Richard Kosmacher with I-Go still? I last heard from him last May 31.

Still no cars in or near Little Village.  Haven't really heard much about I-Go for about 9 months or so.

h' 1.0 said:

Follow-up: after making a bunch of noise about wanting to place a vehicle near me, me scouting out an appropriate location, passing along others' info that said they would use a car in that location . . . my contact at I-Go seems to be disappeared permanently.

Final (?) tally:
Zip Car: 0 (no response at all)

i-Go: -1 for wasting my time with zero results and dropped communication.

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