Sorry, St. Johns and points east of 60th/62nd. You don’t make the Car2Go cut.
Citing a lack of demand, the useful and maddening car service announced today it’ll no longer allow users to park or pick up a ride in huge swaths of outer Portland beginning on August 24. The company’s new “home range” (the area where the car will allow you to “end” a trip and stop being charged):
This is bad news, and contrary to the service equity Portland tries (with very mixed success) to keep in mind. I don’t own a car, and I’ll admit Car2Go has proven really useful in times of need/emergency to fill that void (particularly since roughly half the fleet now has bike racks). That same ease is now shut off to parts of the city that already have access to fewer amenities than the close-in ‘hoods bursting with the awkward-driving white Smart cars.
Car2Go says it comes down to numbers. The company is saying cars sit untouched four times longer in low-usage areas, ” ultimately affecting overall vehicle availability for the Portland membership base, as well as parking for the Portland community.” It also says its reduced range accounts for 92 percent of the demand.
“By modifying the Home Area size to areas where car2go trips occur the most, we believe that this change will help ensure that our vehicles are in constant circulation, and only occupying fixed space for a limited amount of time.”
One way to look at it, East Portland and St. Johns, is that you’ll no longer have to circle the block trying to find a sweet spot where the car will connect to a satellite and allow you to end your session.
I’ve left a message to speak with the company. Will update when I hear back.
Update, 11:23 am: Car2Go spokeswoman Adrianne Wright is painting the move as 100 percent customer focused.
“Cars had been sitting on the street for a day, two days, three days at a time” in the lower-frequency areas, Wright says. “About 90 percent of our members in Portland were expressing that vehicle availability was an issue.”
Does that sound right? I can think of just one time when a car wasn’t within a few blocks when I needed it, and even then it was only because I needed a bike rack. Car2Go has a fleet of 530 Smart cars in Portland, and all of them will remain on the streets when the changes take effect, Wright says.
She’s based in Austin, so I explained that the places Car2Go is pulling service are many of the same places that have traditionally been underserved by any number of resources. She says that company will continue to look at its usage patterns and update its service accordingly.
“We want to service those areas, but if the cars aren’t being used at the end of the day, then it’s an issue,” Wright says.
By the way, the company recently announced a similar service reduction in Austin.
Have similar scalebacks been happening in any other car2go cities?
Austin, apparently. Their home base.
As a regular user, I’d really like to be mad at car2go about this. Hell, I just took one in this morning to Southwest 9th and salmon from right next to the McDonalds on Burnside and 82nd. But this isn’t really their fault, and if its what works for their business model then they have every right to do so.
I will point a finger, though, at the city in general and the PDC in particular for continuing to neglect development projects in the “annexed territories”. It’s starting to feel like shouting into the wind, pointing out the fact that places like East Side industrial, Lloyd center, old town, PSU, etc etc probably don’t really need those development dollars. East of 82nd, or as I like to call it, the other Portland, most definitely do need them. And if there were commercial centers that were developed out there, people would drive to them and make car2go coverage a logical business move. It would also probably relieve a lot of the pressures on the rental market, increased congestion in the urban core, conflicts with NIMBY property owners over apartments/condos, etc.
Portland needs to wake up and realize that its golden era of the mid nineties to mid 2000 was due to the fact that there was room downtown for those conditions to happen. There’s still room in Portland for it to happen, we just need to look forward, and not constantly live in the past.
Cars really did pile up in St. Johns — which is reflected in car2go’s comments that way more trips ended in the nixed areas than began there.
But that’s a transit issue.
It’s reasonably easy to leave and return to St. Johns via Trimet during the day. It’s much more inconvenient at night, once the 44 frequency drops and the already-infrequent 16, over the bridge, stops altogether. Hence car2go’s immense one-way popularity in those parts of town.
I hope that’s the same takeaway PBOT and Trimet are getting.
How dare you come back ’round here after what you pulled, Theriault?
Denise is right. Once Tri-met is done for the night, what option do you have? Uber has helped immensely, but in my neighborhood the 24-Fremont was reduced to every 30 mins several years back and now there’s not ANY weekend service. Cue the one way ride to 82nd.
Car availability is rarely a problem. Getting the car to start once I’ve reached it, however, is frequently a problem. But true to PR gibberish, all of the rapidly disappearing perks to this service are framed as benefiting the customer. A dollar fee for each ride for increased insurance, and we were told we were getting the protection we demanded. They’re removing the gas cards for anyone who picked up a little easy credit, and we’re told that it’s because they don’t want us worrying about fuel. Now we’re told that a vastly reduced scope of service is because we wanted better parking and more available cars. What?
After three years of frustrated use, I quit car2go earlier this year and it’s been the best decision I’ve made in a while. I’m happier, healthier, and richer for it.
Are people still stealing the wheels off of them?
If it isn’t a mid-80’s Camaro with one off-color fender, St Johns doesn’t really want to drive it anyway.
The majority of people I see wandering around east of 82nd don’t look like they have the capacity to cross the street, much less rent a car or use the Internet.
From now until Aug 24th when they change service area – grab a Car2Go somewhere and bring it into area that’s going to be cut. At end of your trip, make sure you or someone else picks it up in short order and takes it somewhere else – but KEEP the car inside this area.
Let’s see how much of their fleet we can capture, and if we can account for more than 8% of their trips for a couple of weeks.
More than one person has observed “it would be funny if the whole fleet ended up on August 23rd parked in areas they’re cutting.”
One way or another, we’ll be sending them a message.
This suggestion also spawned at least one event:
nextdoor.com/events/368336/ (open to all)
… and there may be others.