Rent-a-car, more favored by college students
Owning a car is a privilege that must be accompanied with a big amount of responsibility. Aside from learning how to stop and go and the etiquettes on the road, looking after its numerous auto parts and its parking space are also included. For these and other reasons, a lot of college students in the US have opted to go for the rental cars.
Carnegie Mellon University, for example, has about 7,000 or more students. A big number of these students probably brings cars, but the Pennsylvania-based campus can only provide 2,700 measly parking spaces, which are already for the students plus the university’s faculty and personnel. With such parking space problems, most of the students do not bring autos anymore or more so, get a new one. The car space woes also affect the University of Minnesota, amongst others.
“With some 80,000 folks here a day and just 20,000 parking spaces, anybody we can encourage not to bring a car makes it better,” said Mary Sienko, who is the University of Minnesota’s marketing director.
As an answer for the parking problems, the Carnegie Mellon University and University of Minnesota are part of 70 colleges and universities across the United States that are working with the car-sharing services. These establishments offer per hour rentals to people from the universities.
In the US, two of the biggest car-sharing companies, which both started campus car operation five years ago, are the Massachusetts-based Zipcar and the Seattle-established Flexar. Zipcar and Flexar have veered away from the traditional no below 25-rule and started to accept customers as young as 18.
The yearly membership costs from $25 to $35, while hourly fees costs $5 to $9, for both companies. The given rate of both companies already covers the insurance and the gas.
“It’s so convenient,” said Carina Enbody, who is a senior advertising major in Minnesota. “I’d rather not have a car and have to deal with the maintenance and gas.”
