Closing things up...

Well, wouldn't you know it... Last night coming back from dinner I lost my Marta pass... But I don't have to worry I still have a couple of Breeze cards from before starting the Low Car Diet.

Now for a few reflections... Overall, good to try to do it, but it isn't working for me. Why?

I have a ten year old Jeep that is in great running condition. The yearly costs to keep it are about 1000 (tax, insurance) + gas and maintenance.

I drive up to Kennesaw on a fairly regular basis on an irregular schedule to locations not served by CCT. This means I need to have a car to get there. Once I'm up there I don't want to be rushed to get the ZipCar back to it's parking space to I am wasting money by always reserving the car for much longer than I need it.

I am already a solid Marta user and enjoy the flexability to get around to areas served by the system. My problem is walking a half mile, having a wait for the train and then the ride to go get a ZipCar gets old really quick and makes my old Jeep look really good and convenient since it is in the building.

Looking at my Marta ridership, it has definitely gone up with the monthly pass from about 25 trips to about 45, but my cost per trip difference is only .20$ so I'm happy to absorb the extra 50$/year as many of those extra 20 trips in the last month were to go get and drop off a ZipCar....

My conculsion from the months is that it would cost me at least an extra 150$/month to go without a car. That doesn't work for me in the long run as I don't want to pay nearly 2000/year, but I do like the idea of ZipCar as a backup to my normal options. At least until ZipCar gets some parking spaces within walking distance of where I am... That has been the one thing that irritated me the whole month, no ZipCars near my office or home even though I live in Buckhead and work in Sandy Springs and both places are withing 300 yards of the Marta stations.

Well, my last ZipCar reservation for the diet yesterday was good as I reservered Poirot (a Prius) from 10th and W Peachtree to drive up to 75 & 285 for a business meeting with a client. Everything was in working order and ran beautifully, once I figured out the new controls in the car! Of course I had to use Marta to go pickup the car and get home after dropping it off.

So, my final numbers were:
20 additional Marta trips/month
12 additional miles walked per month
40 fewer miles driven
150$ more per month spent

So, as I'm going to be down in the area this afternoon I'm going to go renew my tag for my Jeep to put it back in service after the Low Car Diet gathering is over...

My conclusion is that for my lifestyle I can't give up a car and my current car is just too inexpensive to operate that gas would need to be well above 5$/gallon before I'd need to alter my lifestyle.