There are 40,000 students and staff either commuting to or living on the CSULB campus and only 13,000 parking spaces. The university has a variety of programs to deal with the parking shortage, as well as reducing congestion and pollution, but much of the focus of those efforts is around bringing people to and from campus.

Yesterday, California State University Long Beach launched a service designed to respond to the needs to get around once a person arrives on campus. It's called car sharing and it is a program of a private company called Zipcar. Since there are several different ways to get to and from campus, Zipcar provides the use of a car which is based on campus and must be returned to campus. The service was also just expanded around UCLA and USC, where the on-campus program has been in operation for a while.

Here's how it works, and you don't need to be a student or faculty member to use it. Imagine that you either carpool to campus, take the free bus service, live on campus, or use the school's vanpool service. Now, in the middle of the day, or at 3:00 in the morning, you suddenly decide to go visit mom, or the doctor, or if you are really lucky, you have a job interview. Since you are a starving student, or a faculty member absorbing your state mandated furlough, you decided to donate that old bucket of bolts. After all, you are on campus most of the time anyway and you don't need a car there. Think of it--no insurance premiums, no gas, no DMV registration fees, AND, NO car payments.

But now, you really need some wheels to get to your appointment or to go see good old mom. No problem, as you are strolling to your next class, you whip out your mobile internet device, go to the Zipcar web site, and log in. You figure about 2.5 hours is enough to visit mom, so you reserve the car for just after your class. That will cost you $20.00--including everything--gas, insurance, a dependable clean car, and a convenient on campus parking place.

After your class, you walk over to the car, wave your Zipcar card--aka Zipcard, at the car, and it unlocks itself. You hop inside, the keys and gas card are there for you and off you go. After your visit with mom, you drive back to campus and return the Zipcar to the assigned parking place. Your $20.00 automobile expenses for the day are automatically charged to your on file bank card and you are done with it.

The service is designed to work in coordination with the various programs to bring people to campus, such as U-PASS, which provides free bus rides to students, faculty and staff through a partnership with Long Beach Transit. According to Rick Gloady, CSULB spokesperson, the U-PASS program is used for 3,000-4,000 free trips per day. A CSULB bus rider does not need any additional paperwork to take advantage of this program. All they need to do is swipe their CSULB ID card when entering the public bus.

Beginning yesterday, five self-service Zipcars - three Honda Insight Hybrids, and two Scion xB's - will be available for use 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The cars are located in reserved spaces at four locations on campus and are available to all students, faculty and staff ages 18 and over. Gas, insurance, 180 free miles, reserved parking and roadside assistance are included in the hourly and daily rates. The hourly rate for weekdays is $8/hour, and $9/hour for the weekends. The daily rates are $66 per weekday and $72 per day for weekends.

Another important aspect of Zipcar's program is that a member can use Zipcars in any of the company's locations. The company reports that they have 6,500 vehicles in urban areas and college campuses throughout 28 North American states and provinces as well as in London, England. The cars are in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, London, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington DC. Zipcar, which has been offering campus car sharing since 2002, now has programs at more than 120 colleges and universities across the country. Among the dozens of colleges that have partnered with Zipcar to reduce traffic, noise and parking demands are MIT, Columbia, Georgetown, American University, University of Michigan, Harvard University, University of Minnesota, University of Toronto, University of North Carolina, The University of Chicago, and UCLA.

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