If they can do it in Lawrence, Kansas...

You may (or may not) remember Lawrence from the 80's TV movie The Day After. Although the city has grown in recent decades to almost 90,000 residents, it still has the feel of small town America.

A few months ago, Hertz announced that it was expanding it's car sharing services to Downtown Lawrence. The Hertz On Demand service features four cars at the nearby University of Kansas. After a few years of operations at KU, the company moved forward with the City to place one car off campus for city residents.

We scratch our heads a little about this here at Buffalo CarShare. Certainly there's a market, or a multinational corporation like Hertz wouldn't be moving off campus, but one car? Our research shows that we define "market" a bit more broadly than the rest of the industry. We don't know Lawrence, Kansas very well, but we're guessing there are more than a handful of city residents that could really benefit from a car sharing program.

The same pattern is also emerging in larger cities like Cincinnati - Zipcar just added three hubs downtown. Cincinnati is about the size of Buffalo, and their Mayor touted the potential benefits of the service, namely to "provide access for people who would otherwise not be able to go about their day-to-day activities". We're curious to know how it's going!

This is the idea behind our Startup Symposium on Tuesday, August 6th in Niagara Falls. 
We'll be talking a bit about our model, which is aimed at serving a broad range of households in terms of income, race, and age. We'll also be comparing notes with other car sharing organizations from small and mid-sized cities, such as Ithaca CarShare in the Finger Lakes region of New York and Community CarShare in Southern Ontario.

You can find the full agenda here. Session topics include:

• Choosing a business model
• Growing your organization
• Gaining "anchor institution" and community support
• Identifying funding sources
• Developing college and university partnerships

The Symposium is aimed at communities like Rochester and Albany, among others, that are considering or working to launch car sharing operations in their cities. The Symposium is free, but space is limited, so please RSVP to j.reichert@buffalocarshare.org by Thursday, August 1st.

We'll also be giving demonstrations of our BikeShare program throughout the day. We hope you can join us!

NY-grown Social Bikes system launches quietly in Buffalo

System featuring innovative GPS-based "smart bikes" launches ahead of Manhattan's massive CitiBike network.

In early April, we opened the doors on our fledgling BikeShare network at the University at Buffalo with 25 bicycles available to students, faculty, and staff. Over the summer, the fleet will grow to a 75-bike system to be tested in a variety of urban settings, with ambitions for a larger-scale system in 2014. Starting this week, we opened membership up to all CarShare members and to employees of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. Additional locations beyond the University at Buffalo will be unveiled in the coming weeks.

The main highlight of the technology developed by NYC-based Social Bicycles is that locking, tracking, and communications functions are all embedded within the frame of the bicycle. This so-called "smart bike" technology comes at a fraction of the costs and size of more bulky kiosk-based systems.

While Buffalo might not be the first city that comes to mind for startup culture, we can claim a number of "firsts":

• First joint Car and Bicycle sharing system in the US
• First urban deployment of a kiosk-less GPS-based bikeshare system
• First major BikeShare deployment in a "Rust Belt" city

Creighton Randall, Executive Director of Buffalo CarShare explains the approach being taken "we are slowly scaling up this system and sending feedback to the Social Bicycles team. There are always some risks and challenges with innovation, but we're comfortable learning and adopting new technologies and processes in order to bring a new bikeshare system to Buffalo. And we're lucky that we have partners like the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and University at Buffalo that value innovation and are willing to be the first to pilot this technology with us." UB is one of only a few universities in the nation with a high-tech bikeshare system, and the only one featuring smart-bike technology. "We also have a loyal membership base that is up to the task as well," continued Randall.

Another ambition of the Buffalo BikeShare system to serve a diverse population of members. The non-profit leads the car sharing industry in service to low-income residents and people of color, and much attention has been paid to public bikeshare systems' struggles with the issue of equity. For this and other reasons, Buffalo makes for a "perfect real-world laboratory" says Social Bicycles CEO Ryan Rzepecki "you have a city ripe for innovation and experimentation, a group of committed individuals with ready access to a network of users, and the right partners on board to provide seed funding". The 75-bike pilot project is made possible by a unique partnership between two New York State agencies, NYSERDA and NYSDOT, who have been funding similar research and development projects for several years. The agencies are providing $142,855 towards the project, and also provided funding for the launch of the CarShare program in 2009, which continues to grown on its own and now features 15 vehicles and 600 members.

CarShare members and BNMC employees can sign up here

Announcing ScooterShare

Buffalo CarShare announces the launch of ScooterShare

ScooterShare fleet readies for launch

Are you one of the many who longs for the breeze in your face, the occasional bug in your smile, and an excuse to buy a brightly-colored vintage helmet? Fear not, your days of waiting are over.

Buffalo CarShare (BCS) is proud to announce that we are testing a fleet of scooters, which will soon be introduced into our fleet. The scooters will not be owned by BCS, but will be lent out from neighbor-to-neighbor. This first-of-its-kind concept started thanks to a large fleet of scooters owned by Mark Legaza. A range of scooters, vespas, and other mopeds will be available.

Mark Legaza, owner of scooter armada

"I've got way more scooters than I need!" said Legaza. The surplus scooters will be made available to all current BCS members. Non-members can have access to the service for a nominal fee. They can be reserved by the minute for 10 cents per minute. According to BCS Board Chair, Todd Salansky, this will encourage members to be more efficient with their reservations. "I saw one of our beta testers straight arm an old lady in the produce section at the Co-Op to get to the checkout, so it needs to be tweaked a little bit but this is what innovation looks like, right?"


Creighton Randall, BCS Executive Director has high hopes for ScooterShare. "We actually had to refinance half the fleet to get this going, but I figure that we'll be swapping out cars with scooters in no time, so it seemed like a sound investment." Randall reports the up and coming BikeShare system will soon be entirely replaced with scooters.

Jason Wilson and Bernice Radle, the first official members

Randall invites all members to sign up today to become members. Jason Wilson and Bernice Radle, the first official beta testers of the system, have nothing but good things to say about the service. "We were super excited to hear that the bikes integrate with the BCS key fob system. Now I just see a scooter, hop on and leave it wherever. I thought at first that the owners would care where they were returned to, but I guess they just eventually make their way back. Like cats." states Bernice. "Jason even got a tattoo with the new ScooterShare logo, so our membership is free for life!"

Scooter tattoos guarantee lifetime membership

Mr. Randall confirmed the tattoo discount, and as to the feline analogy, stated "Ms. Radle brings up a great point. We thought about placing GPS units on the scooters, but it was going to get pretty expensive. Then one of our staff members brought up cats, and we were like 'problem solved!'"

Join Bernice and Jason in becoming the one of the first to try out this revolutionary peer-to-peer ScooterShare today!