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Zipcar to Roxbury: You are not worthy
By adamg on Thu, 12/16/2010 - 9:30am
Galen Moore notices a rather large hole in Zipcar's Boston coverage - not a single one of their cars is available in Roxbury or the neighboring parts of Dorchester.
Hmm, a quick look at their map also shows zilchcar in Hyde Park.
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Comments
BostonNOW journalism, BBJ wrapping
Good job, Galen. Not only do you completely overlook the ZipCar vehicles at RCC and Jackson, but you tar an entire company while doing so. As for Dorchester, the cars at Savin Hill Avenue, the Savin Hill T station and Dorchester Tire aren't Dot enough for you? Jesus, man, all that information is available right on the company's map! Way to go, Lego hair.
Followup: Zipcar says nobody wants it in Roxbury
Moore talks to a Zipcar exec, who says the issue is that the company only goes where people have requested it, and it just hasn't gotten enough requests from Roxbury, or at least the part of Roxbury that doesn't ride the Orange Line.
none in West Roxbury either.
none in West Roxbury either. This is less about race, than it is about lack of density.
Maybe it's because.
Mr.& Mrs Franklin P. Yuppington don't live in those neighborhoods. Heck, they don't even like going to Somerville to pick up their Insight.
Or, more likely...
... the lack of grad students living in Roxbury, near-Rox Dot, and Hyde Park.
And all of the Yuppies I've ever met lease SUVs which they can't drive in-lane, and have to pay to park.
[I'm way too old to be a yuppie, FWIW. And my minivan is paid off.]
Redlining?
Looks like there is an opportunity for an enterprising entrepreneur! I think Zipcar probably knows better than a blogger what the costs/benefits are of car location. If the blogger thinks otherwise, they should encourage zipcar's competitors to enter the market.
You think that's who uses Zipcar?
That's adorable.
The Yuppingtons have their
The Yuppingtons have their own set of matching Range Rovers complete with their own set of monogrammed matching parking spaces. You think yuppies would deign to drive 'rentals'? tsk tsk!
Since when is the LMA,
Since when is the LMA, Mission Hill, and Jamaica Plain NOT PART OF ROXBURY?
Jamaica Plain?
That hasn't been part of Roxbury since the 1860s (?) when West Roxbury (which then included Roslindale and JP, which is how we get a West Roxbury District Court in JP) broke away.
LMA and Mission Hill, I'll grant you, although there are now people who argue Mission Hill is its own neighborhood. For the purposes of Moore's article, though, I think he's talking about the main, non-student part of Roxbury, along, say, Washington Street.
In which case...
The ones at RCC are a few blocks down Cedar from Washington St.
ZipCar isn't a public library
ZipCar isn't a public library for cars... Their business model only works if every car in the fleet is in demand. They do constantly rearrange their cars throughout the city, but you can't force a private company to expand into your neighborhood until their market research indicates that it would be profitable.
common carrier
ZipCar isn't a public library for cars...
No, but they've been given parking spots in a lot of public and government parking lots. Y'know, the kind of things that common carriers get. And that means that they better be operating for public convenience and necessity.
One of the requirements of a common carrier is that you provide service without discrimination. And if that means you put your precious zipcars in Da Hood, so be it. Even if some of you idiots are right that there are technically cars SOMEWHERE in Dorchester or Roxbury. Zipcars are only useful to people within a 5-10 minute walk, roughly. The guy is right- there's a big effin' hole right over Where The Black People Live. A hole that is a lot bigger than a 5-10 minute walk.
So...
Given that Zipcar does constantly shuffle its parking spaces and cars, do we know that there have NEVER been any Zipcars in, as Brett so charmingly and reductively puts it, Where The Black People Live? Is it just me, or does that seem like a pretty important piece of information to have before people start casually slinging intimations of company-wide racism?
they don't shuffle
Given that Zipcar does constantly shuffle its parking spaces and cars
They don't 'constantly shuffle' spaces. I can think of at least a dozen locations where they haven't moved from in several years. The cars do rotate slowly, though.
Oooh, at least a dozen!
If we're playing that game, I can think of at least a dozen spots where they used to have cars, but don't anymore.
So...yeah, again, can't really see where you're going with that.
ZipCar is not "given" parking spaces
ZipCar rents parking spaces for their vehicles, so not sure where you are going with that. They are not taxis.
And by your tinfoil hat logic "Where The Black People Live" is also West Roxbury, Charlestown and other places where there are low/no ZipCars (and yes many do).
To continue your Ross Perot style geographic definition of "Where The Black People Live", does that mean Black People don't live in the South End because there are a bunch of ZipCars there?
Shouldn't you be out there educating police officers on the finer points of the law as it applies to scooters?
fine.
ZipCar rents parking spaces for their vehicles, so not sure where you are going with that. They are not taxis.
Common carrier refers not only to delivery companies, taxis, etc... but also telecommunication companies (who get access to public infrastructure, ie poles and under-sidewalk/road space.)
The similarity of allowing access to, or leasing, public space to a private company to provide services to the public...sounds an awful lot like both Zipcar and telecom.
Just let it go, man
Zipcar is a membership service. It's not a carrier of the public, nor the public's goods. Only in some warped space inside your head is anyone even considering Zipcar to be a "common carrier" of anything. Let it go.
Furthermore, nearly all of Zipcar's spaces are privately owned. It's only in odd situations where towns have weird by-laws, like Brookline, that Zipcar usually has any public spaces. Usually, that's done, with great consternation of the city that never foresaw the problem with their own by-laws for a company like this, because they can't legally "own or rent for commercial purpose within residential areas" (like apartment building parking spaces) and there's only so many gas stations they can pay for parking. However, the city doesn't want to be known as "the guys who kept us from having Zipcars", so they rent out a few public lot spaces to Zipcar and everyone's happy...except you.
Zipcar rents space in Somerville city-owned parking lots
at least behind Rite Aid in Davis Square, next to Harvard Vanguard on the other side of Davis, near CVS in Magoun Square, on Broadway in East Somerville, and possibly other places as well.
Somerville was one of Zipcar's first service areas.
What's this "public" shit?
You don't really know how Zipcar works, do you, Brett? The "public" has nothing to do with it. Zipcar's cars are there for their members. Someone who isn't a Zipcar member can't just walk up to a car and rent it. That's not public.
None in Chelsea or Everett either
places where I'd think the demand for such a service would be pretty high (lots of transit-dependent immigrants)
Playing loose with the picture and names
I'll agree that there's a conspicuous lack of cars between Washington Park and Upham's Corner (basically along Blue Hill Ave), but this article's accompanying picture and description is really pushing the limits of reasonability.
There are 5 cars in Dorchester Center right on Dot Ave within walking distance of the Ashmont T stop. You can see a hint of one of the Zipcar icons in the very bottom right edge of his map screenshot. Roxbury also has 6 cars on Columbus near Jackson Square. That may seem like paying lip service to "Roxbury" but then again, it's not called "JP Community College"...and they have 4 cars there.
Speaking of the screenshot, something like 25-30% of it is Franklin Park. Let me be the first to say I'm GLAD they didn't put Zipcar hazards on the 12th hole of the golf course or in the giraffe pen.
Also, to say they have cars "in Southie" is about as true as saying they have "none" in Dorchester. They have 2 cars in Southie east of Dorchester St, the part of Southie least served by the MBTA...AND they're all the way up by the fort.
It's not just Roxbury, either. Look at Charlestown. It's less than 2 miles from their national headquarters in East Cambridge, and there's ONE car near Bunker Hill and ONE more up 99 closer to Sullivan Square.
Finally, if you think Roxbury's bad, look at Belmont. So, it's not simply about the money.
Purely speculation, but here goes:
This first part is not speculation, but the second part will be.
Part one:
ZIP Car is a business, and as such, it's going to want to go where it's possible to make money. If they aren't in Roxbury or parts of Dorchester, then they must hold the view that the number of rentals wouldn't be high enough to justify the fixed costs of setting up a service location.
At first glance, it seems odd that there wouldn't be enough demand in these communities. As noted by the blogger, car ownership is low, and as noted by folks on here, transit utilization is high. But ZIP car doesn't see an adequate customer base. Why?
Part two:
I can only think of two reasons why a neighborhood like Roxbury wouldn't support enough rentals to make the investment worthwhile.
Conclusion
It's possible for ZIP car to have very sound business reasons that justify not locating in Roxbury. We don't know what they are, but I see no reason to suspect anything other than low demand. This doesn't seem like an instance of red lining to me.
Don't assume discrimination, but also don't assume not
(And yes, there are Zipcars in Roxbury, as people have pointed out. We use them all the time.)
Zipcar is cheap, and for all but really frequent car users, it's cheaper than owning a car. Do people own cars in Dorchester and Roxbury? Of course they do. Walk around and look at all the cars parked on residential streets and in driveways. A lot of these people are spending more on owning a car than they would with Zipcar, so it can't be that they're too poor to use Zipcar.
There aren't many licensed drivers in Rox and Dot? See above.
Even if there are legitimate business reasons, the end result is that people miss out. That's an effect of various -isms. Systemic oppression doesn't have to involve people intentionally screwing other people over, and it usually doesn't.
A classic example is how someone with a Caucasian hair type can find appropriate hair products in any store, simply because there are more Caucasians and more Caucasian business owners. Someone with African-textured hair can't find appropriate products in any store. Thus this one aspect of an African American person's life is made harder because of racism. This doesn't mean the store owners hate Black people, and most probably don't. And it doesn't mean that someone who owns a corner store in whiter-than-white East Bumfuck should carry these products, because, no, it wouldn't make good business sense to carry something there isn't demand for. But it does mean that a Caucasian person has a privilege that a person of color doesn't, in that s/he can go into any old store and get this stuff, where a person of color might have to shop around or in the case of living in EBF might have to mail order it.
Recall I said it was speculation?
I don't have the data zip car looked at. But I do know that very few businesses of any scale will purposefully exclude a valid customer base. Whether it's economics, density of licensed drivers, cultural factors, who are you or I to say.
As for your second point, yes, there are many root causes for whatever might lead to the situation that makes a neighborhood not fit into zip car's strategy. But we shouldn't blame zip car for this, which is what the linked post seems to want to do.
Resource utilization
.
So what if someone misses out, it's business decision. Contrary to popular belief, Zipcar only has so many resources - in this case, it's cars. How much will a particular car be used if it's placed in Rox/Dorchester vs. placing a car downtown? I have no idea, but I'm sure someone has done tha analysis. Are there some people in these area that could use Zipcar? Of course. Are there enough? No idea.
A car placed in Roxbury is a car not placed elsewhere. If a car is 10% utilized in Rox and 50% utilized downtown, maybe the best place for that car is downtown. Zipcar is not a social services organization, it's not their responsibility to take care of people who may miss out. It's a private company, we don't even know if they're profitable. If a competitor sees an opportunity in Rox, then they can place cars there and try to make a buck.
ZipCar cheap?
ZipCar is cheap compared to owning a car only if you own a car you don't use very often. It's a lot more expensive than not driving at all and prohibitively expensive for anyone who needs a car regularly, i.e. for work or school.
The ZipCar demographic is people with disposable income who don't own cars but want one occasionally, mostly for non-essential purposes. That's not poor people.
Do you know many poor people?
A lot of the low-income folks I know own a car that they can't really afford because there's no way they're going to rely on public transport when their child is sick, or any number of other reasons.
I also know a lot of people on public assistance who use Zipcar. This includes a few who take the T a few miles to a car when they want it for a day trip to visit someone in the burbs or to bring home something large from the store. It's cheaper than paying for delivery, renting a car, or taking cabs.
I know even more who want to use Zipcar because someone told them how much they like it, but there aren't any close enough.
Know any? I am one
and ZipCar is an incredibly extravagance that I rarely use and can never afford. ZipCar would go out of business if it was relying on people like me as customers.
I'm thinking that
their customer base is bigger than one person. :o)
A classic example is how
Another Deval voter speaks up.
Parking is a premium and carjacking?
I also wonder if they look at the ratios of how many cars are jacked in the area. There's no point in laying out a couple of zipcars in the area if you know eventually someone will jack the car and sell it for parts immediately.
Another issue might be the rental costs to acquire spaces for the cars.
Part 1
part 1 hits the nail on the head. Zipcars job is to make money. And more and more of their clientele have money. Over the years I've seen a parking lot that had 4 'cheap' zipcars and one 'expensive' car turn into a lot with 4 expensive cars and one cheap car, and the cheap car is the one always available. Now that they're an established company, they know where the money is and how to get it.
Seeing the 'empty' area in the middle of that zipcar map I see two other things. You'll notice the other JP and Dot zipcars are clustered around T stations, where you'll find lots of walkers. The empty zone on the map, aside form being free of zipcars, happens to also be void of any transit (aside from buses). A T stop is a convenient point everyone knows of. Are there a lot of centers in Roxbury with a large population within a 1/4 mile walk who could be zipcar customers?
In that area, there are also a LOT of driveways, and plenty of on street parking. Are there really enough non or single car households to provide enough business to Zipcar?
Bingo, transit hubs
It may not make sense to park zipcars in less densely populated urban areas if the customer base isn't there, but if the cars are near a transit hub for those areas they are accessible to a lot of potential customers.
If I live in a neighborhood not served well by the subway and don't have a car I probably take the bus. If I know the bus system I probably know how to take the bus from my neighborhood to the subway station...(wait for it)...Where The Car Is Parked!
Doesn't seem like a bad deal. If I really want to go to Ikea to pick up something to assemble I take the bus to the T station and get in the car and go there. I buy my stuff, drop it off at home and return the car and take the bus home. Riding a bike would make this whole process shorter, but that's for another post.
Not in Roxbury??
I kinda thought Mission Hill, Roxbury Crossing, and Roxbury Community College were in Roxbury? Maybe it is just a funny name coincidence with those last two.
Maybe West Roxbury?
Perhaps the author confused the two neighborhoods. Westie doesn't appear to have a single zip car location.
That's it
It's Westie-ism!
They have a stupid map, actually
There are at least two Zipcars at Harvard Vanguard (which makes sense, given that it's next to the large-ish Hancock Village complex, which has a lot of the sort of people who might use a Zipcar, i.e., grad and post-grad students). You can see them noted on the map if you zoom in, then follow VFW Parkway.
Nevertheless
regardless of neighborhood boundaries, there's a substantial area of dense, inhabited residential area without Zipcars. If you live along Warren Street or Blue Hill Ave. you're pretty far from any Zipcars, even though two of the MBTA's busiest bus lines (23 and 28) run through the neighborhood.
RACISM!
Oh man. I also just noticed that there aren't any California Pizza Kitchens in Roxbury. There's two in Boston, one in Cambridge, but none in Dorchester or Roxbury.
I cannot believe this. It's outrageous.
AmI a jackass if I ask, since when did having access to a zipcar become a right that we need to protect for others? Since when did having a car at all become a right? Or even a license?
Zipcar locations
Zipcar also has to have a place to put the cars; maybe nobody in the aforementioned areas is willing to give up spots for Zipcars?
That said, there are, as others have mentioned, at least two Zipcar locations, each with multiple cars, within half a mile of my Roxbury home.
Parking spots?
Did you actually read the article that was linked?
More speculation
I'm looking at the map, and while I do see the big giant hole of coverage, I also see four Zipcars within about six blocks of Egleston Square. Granted, they're all at the Brewery, but is it possible that those cars aren't getting used enough for Zipcar to consider it necessary to have more within the same area? Again, speculation, and Mr. Moore doesn't mention why Zipcar said no.
Zip Car is too expensive. A
Zip Car is too expensive.
A company with say 10% lower prices could make it profitable even figuring in a higher theft rate if the cars were being utilized constantly.
There is a window of opportunity here for a new business.
A company identifying themselves as say; Blue Hill Transportation could reap the benefits of being associated with the target market.
Capitalism does work...eventually.
I doubt that's the problem
The whole Blue Hill Ave. corridor has lots of vacant or underutilized lots that could easily hold a few Zipcars instead of weeds.
Sure...
But they need property owners' permission. I agree that it's probably not really the issue; I just thought I'd toss it out there.
it's not 1:1 but I've always
it's not 1:1 but I've always seen a correlation btw mbta/mbcr and zipcar. Not so much as a direct cause, but rather that a viable public transport option affords a lower rate of car ownership in an area. Roxbury largely gets screwed on effective transit, and the aforementioned areas where it has it (Orange Line) there are zipcars.
This is very interesting.
This is very interesting. Normally UHub posters would run to claim racism, especially when it involves a corporation or business. But Zipcar is a beloved service that makes the aforementioned posters feel that they are helping the environemnt by not having a car and also allows them to appear to be hip, trendy and chic.
Or maybe...
Or maybe a badly researched article that seems to be based more on the author's opinion than on the facts is what gets us all in bunch.
Once again...
You're adorable. Don't ever change, snookums.
Here's an Idea...
If you're a Zipcar member and email them to say, "I hate how far we have to travel to use Zipcar, can't you put one closer," they may very well put a car closer to where you would like. My now ex-partner and I did just that when we lived in East Boston and very soon afterward we no longer had to go on the Blue Line to pick up a Zipcar. We're both white, but I don't think Zipcar knew that. And Zipcar didn't seem to have any problem with putting a car in a neighborhood where some of the residents are both poor and people of color! You people who begin your ignorant posts,"It's a business, so..." need to not graft your racism and stupidity onto Zipcar's business model.
Racism
There are also no Popeyes Chicken or KFC in Belmont WTF. Racism if I have ever seen it.
if i were in charge i would
if i were in charge i would never put zipcars around blue hill ave. dorchester and roxbury arent just predominantly black, they also have the highest crime rate in the city by far. They also have the craziest drivers and the worst roads. the cars would be used to traffic drugs in and around the city and also driven by people under the influence of drugs. Even though a lot of working families would use them and there might not even ever be a problem, the risk is too high to justify expanding into that area.
I feel like nobody who's trying to cry racism even lives around here, or is even black. I really don't understand why so many white people care so much about racism, or why people on this site love to talk about roxbury dorchester and mattapan even though they probably never go there. I live between codman square and grove hall and when you walk around at night (especially in the summer) you see plenty of reasons to not ever have a car unguarded around here. Even if the ceo of zipcar hates blacks, it doesnt matter. its not illegal and certainly not out of the ordinary in boston
ZIP car is in Roxbury
There's a ZIP cars lot at 1542 Columbus Avenue, corner of Ritchie Street in Roxbury, just across from the Jackson Square (T) Station. Urban Edge parking lot I believe.
Enough with the charges of "racism"
Zipcar is a business and makes risk/benefit analysis about where to put their cars. They are under no obligation ("moral" "ethical" "political" "progressive" "green" "anti-racist") to do otherwise. If there are people who live in these areas that want Zipcar, they are free to make their case and see what can be worked out. Good luck to them. I wouldn't put a car to be stolen or vandalized there, but that's just me.
I'm not a racist.
No, not obligated...
I don't believe that they are racISTs unless given evidence as to actual statements they've made about inferiority of other races. But if I were running a business and I noticed that my clientele was considerably more white (or straight, or nondisabled...) than the general population, I'd wonder what I was doing wrong that my business didn't feel comfortable and accessible to the groups of people who weren't showing up.
Now, I don't know that Zipcar's clientele don't represent a natural slice of the population. But if customers of color are highly underrepresented, and the business owners aren't looking into how they can make them feel more comfortable using the business, then I'd say that the business owner is perpetuating racISM by having available something useful and desirable that isn't as available to people of color.
Sure, they're trying to make a buck, but they're also humans, and humans have a certain degree of moral responsibility. Plenty of people manage to run a profit-making business while also being highly ethical.
(And before anyone says butbutbutfreemarketeconomy, using cars is clearly something that would appeal to people of any group. It isn't like they're selling a product like this: http://www.theonion.com/video/africanamerican-boyc...)
They don't have that luxury
Big assumption. Zipcar doesn't have any profits. One statement I saw showed they had a net loss of $4.7 million in '09, $14.5 million loss in '08. They are in growth mode where everything gets plowed back into the business. They simply don't have the luxury of putting cars in places where they won't be utilized as much as other places (as I mentioned above). In the mode they are in now, they are just trying to grab the low hanging fruit and stay alive.
Replace race with income and then think it through again
ZIP Car caters to people who fit a certain economic status. If they do not have a significant black clientele (or more likely, poor black clientele), then it is because they don't offer something that is affordable. Blacks have a much higher poverty rate than whites, which is a terrible fact of life in America, one that I hope we can change. But it's not ZIP car's job to effect that change.
Zip Cars in Roxbury
I used to live in Fort Hill. There are Zip Cars available in the Roxbury Community College Parking Lot. I used them all the time.
I can remember way back when
I can remember way back when a liberal was one who was generous with his own money. Will Rogers.
Conversely
I can remember when a Conservative was interested in, well, conserving things - air, land, water, tax money.
Oh, but I get it - liberals want to spend money on PEOPLE.
zipcar
Is this reporting or is this bad blogging or bad reporting without the benefit of a fact checker? Adamg, did you(as the reporter) attempt to verify Galen's claims? Who is Galen anyway? Why not just say some random dude told me that somebody at Zipcar said people who live in Roxbury and ride the Orange Line can't rent Zipcars. Do you even know where Roxbury is or what subway line or busses service it? RCC is on the orange line. Across the street from Roxbury Crossing. Other than that, the majority of Roxbury is served by bus.
Galen Moore
If you follow the link, you'll see he's a reporter for Mass. High Tech, which has been around for awhile (as has he). Given that he lives in Egleston Square (in fact, is on the board of Egleston Square Main Streets), I suspect he's familiar with Roxbury's borders. I linked to his post because I thought it was an interesting issue.
He might also have made a better case if he'd been a bit clearer he was talking about the area where Roxbury and Dorchester come together. Yes, you can get a Zipcar at RCC, but given that it's on the Columbus Avenue side of Roxbury, it's not all that convenient to somebody who lives, say, closer to Blue Hill Avenue.