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Car Rental Zipcar Getting Tryout at University of Arkansas

3 min read

The University of Arkansas is trying an on-campus rental-car program again.

Zipcar launched Sept. 20 on the Fayetteville campus and announced that two cars — a Ford Escape and a Ford Focus — are available for hourly or daily use for Zipcar members.

University of Arkansas faculty, staff and students are eligible to join Zipcar for $25, a $10 discount from the company’s standard annual membership fee.

The university had a similar arrangement with Hertz on Demand but lack of use caused Hertz to cancel the program a year ago, said Gary Smith, the director of the UA’s transit and parking department. Hertz had a break-even mark of 33 percent use, which Arkansas reached in only one semester during the nearly three years Hertz was on campus.

Smith hopes for better success with Zipcar, which is a subsidiary of Avis.

“Hertz didn’t work very well,” Smith said. “I don’t know if it was a lack of publicity or what it was. It didn’t seem to work very well anywhere.”

Smith said the arrangement with Zipcar doesn’t cost the UA any money, and, in fact, the company pays the university for two reserved parking spots in campus Lot 37, which is located near the Garland Center. Smith hopes that the program grows so that more cars will be put in the system for use.

Smith said Zipcar’s program at Ohio State has 57 vehicles for members to use. Smith doesn’t think UA, with enrollment of 26,237, would ever need as many cars as Ohio State, which had more than 57,000 students in 2013.

Smith said university officials reached out to other universities that use Zipcar to get a sense of how well the program works. Zipcar said in a statement that it has arrangements with more than 350 universities.

“We wanted to give them a try and see if we could have it work here,” Smith said.

Smith said that when the university decided to go with Hertz a few years ago, university officials considered Zipcar as well. At the time, Zipcar required a guaranteed amount of use that UA felt it couldn’t agree to.

Hertz, which didn’t have a required use amount, didn’t work out, though, and Smith said the program required too much time and effort on the university’s part to market and promote the service. Smith said Zipcar no longer requires a minimum-use standard and handles all the details.

Zipcar members can reserve the vehicle on a smartphone, by telephone or through the Internet. Rates are $7.50 an hour or $69 a day. Zipcar covers fuel and insurance costs for drivers over 21, but university students ages 18-21 can use Zipcar if they have valid insurance.

Smith said the service could be a big convenience for students who don’t have a car on campus, although that is not as common as it once was. Smith said many international students or those from distant reaches of the United States often do not bring cars with them.

Smith said that when he enrolled as a student in 1976, only about half of the freshmen had cars, while most recent studies have shown that number has grown to about 80 percent. For those 20 percenters, though, having access to a car can be important — or Zipcar could make it unnecessary for some students to bring cars to campus if they only need them a few times a month.

In the Zipcar program, members with a reservation go to the car, swipe their membership card on the windshield reader to unlock the car, and then off they go. Smith said that when the drivers are done with the car — whether it was an hour-long trip to run errands or a day trip to visit family — they bring the car back to the reserved spot in Lot 37.

There is a fuel card in each vehicle so the returning driver can fill up the tank if it drops to less than a quarter full. Zipcar pays for up to 180 miles of use a day.

Smith said the Zipcar program will complement the university’s bus system.

Smith said there were nearly 2 million bus rides last school year and just over 2 million the year before, adding that about 20 percent of riders were community members and not students.

“We have an excellent transit system, but it doesn’t run on Sundays,” Smith said.

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