Author: Dean DeChiaro
After almost a year and a half of planning and negotiations, two Zipcars – a Toyota Prius and a Scion XB – have been made available for use by Occidental students, faculty, staff and local Eagle Rock residents. The cars arrived on campus on Aug. 1. This marks the culmination of a long process of collaboration between Urban and Environmental Policy (UEP) students, the Green Committee of the Associated Students of Occidental College (ASOC) Senate, and administrative officials.
The cars are available for $8/hr or $66/day on weekdays and $9/hr or $72/day on weekends. These fees cover maintenance, insurance and gas for the entire rental period. Upon signing up for Zipcar, students, faculty or staff members also pay a $35 annual fee. According to Eliza Dornbush (junior), who spearheaded the initiative with former ASOC Senator Annie Wolfstone (junior), the project not only eventually make the campus more green, but will ease local traffic congestion and decrease the demand for on-campus parking availability.
“People are trying to get green, but everyone still has cars. Zipcar is a middle ground,” she said. According to Zipcar, each vehicle available to Oxy can subsidize the same amount of use as 15-20 personally owned cars on campus.
UEP Professor Mark Vallianatos thinks that the vehicles have the potential to inspire students to shift their lifestyles. “With Zipcars available, some students whom might have brought cars to campus will hopefully live car free, walking and biking and taking transit more and riding with friends and using the Zipcar occasionally when they do need a car,” he said in an e-mail interview.
Furthermore, the project’s success, according to Dornbush, would also allow more flexible transportation around Los Angeles for students without cars.
“We’re trying to recognize that we have a car-centric campus, but that not every student has a car. It’s hard in L.A. to get anywhere without a car, so now Zipcar gives them that option,” Dornbush said.
Though Zipcar could not release specific statistics on the usage of the Oxy Zipcars so far, they did praise the program and encouraged the growth of the program over time. “We are happy with the progress of the program and look forward to continuing to build on the initial success,” Richard Paisner, an account manager at Zipcar, said in an e-mail statement.
The initiative began during the fall 2009 semester, when Dornbush was enrolled in Professor Vallianatos’ Campus Sustainability course, and Wolfstone was the head of the Senate’s green committee. After researching a project that would evaluate the opportunity for bringing Zipcar to campus, Dornbush discovered that Wolfstone was simultaneously working on a similar project to present to the ASOC Senate. The project gained momentum when they consolidated their research, and were able to present a strong case to the administration.
“The collaboration made it easier, and more plausible. We were able to present the idea to the administration as a team, rather than just me or Annie alone,” Dornbush said.
“We realized that if we merged our efforts to bring Zipcar to Oxy we would be more successful,” Wolfstone said. “I think that represents what Oxy is all about. Merging interests in our small college to cause change and eliminate redundancy.”
Some students are excited about the Zipcars and the opportunities they could offer. “Unfortunately Los Angeles has very little infrastructure when it comes to public transportation so students are forced to use cars to get around, but it is good to see Occidental taking green initiatives like this,” UEP major Alex Forster (junior) said.
There is some concern amongst the student body over the fact that only two cars were made available, but Forster said that it would serve a college campus just fine. “A college student often only needs to use a vehicle to run short errands that are normally pretty close to campus, distance-wise. I personally think that if students get involved in the program it will have a really big influence on campus life, and have a lot of room to grow,” he said.
The initiative also places Oxy on par with other local colleges and universities. CalTech, USC, the Claremont Colleges and many of the UC schools all have Zipcars available. “It helps our image. Other schools are doing it, we should be doing it, too,” said Dornbush.
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