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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

I can't wait until SF gets Car2Go. It's an amazing service that is surprisingly cheaper than Uber, Lyft... even the bus!

The most expensive part of a cab ride is the labor. That labor is uneccesary for people who know how to drive and haven't been drinking. Car2Go fixes that problem handily.

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Parking is going to be a problem. Even with something the size of the Smart car parking SF is going to be a gigantic pain.

I have a friend who lived in the Outer Richmond and we'd meet up from time to time. He'd take his car because it's the Outer Richmond and transit is basically non-existent. Conversations when we meet up would go something like:

"I'm here in front of the restaurant"

"Be there in 5. Looking for parking."

[5 minutes later]

"Hang on..."

[15 minutes later]

"Okay, got a spot. See you soon."

I'm from Vancouver and we have several car-sharing services here - Car2Go, ZipCar, Modo. There are not only dedicated spots all over the place, but recently a bylaw was passed to allow cars from car-shared services to park in all spots that say "permit required" [1]

[1] http://vancouver.ca/streets-transportation/residential-parki...

That's true. I hope cities will start to dedicate spots to shared cars at some point. It only makes sense that a car used by many people would get some precedent over a car that only serves one person. I can also imagine shopping centers providing free spots to encourage foot traffic.

That just happened in SF, actually:

http://sf.streetsblog.org/2013/05/21/sfmta-to-designate-hund...

A 12-spot trial run was successful and now an additional 300 curbside spots are going to be designated for shared cars. Not bad.

How could that be enforceable? It's one thing to police a HOV lane where you can easily see multiple people, but parked cars have 0 people in them.

I'm speaking of cars that belong to a car share organization -- ZipCar, Car2Go, CityCarShare -- which are clearly marked.

ZipCar already has dedicated spots in Chicago all over the place.

Car2Go is an amazing idea! I really hope they don't raise their prices as well since it's actually cheaper than Lyft or Sidecar + you get to drive!

If I'm reading this correctly it says you just park the car at the other end and get out? In SF I'd pay a premium not to have to park a car. Parking, in my limited experience, often takes much longer than the actual driving part.

Car2go should build a hand-off feature, where you can find people near where you're going who want a car. Then you can just pull up, put on the blinker for a few seconds and give them the car without parking.

I could imagine this would often work downtown at busy times.

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