Zipcar Proceeds to Run on Campus
You don’t need to have a car on campus to have a good practice at SUNY Cortland.
But it can be nice: Shopping trips to the mall in Syracuse. Scenic tours of Ithaca’s gorge or the rolling Finger Lakes. Grocery shopping. The laundromat.
That’s where Zipcar comes in. The popular car-sharing alternative to vehicle ownership and car rental launched at the College in October. The program offers registered SUNY Cortland users – students, faculty and staff – access to two cars parked near the Student Life Center twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
The service costs $15 a year for annual membership plus student-discounted rates that commence at $7.50 per hour or $Sixty nine for a total day. Gas, insurance and maintenance are included in those charges.
Members must be at least eighteen years old with a valid driver’s license. They’re able to reserve a Zipcar online or from their smartphone for as brief as an hour or as long as seven days, with a driving limit of one hundred eighty miles per day. For perspective, it’s toughly thirty miles to Syracuse, forty five miles to Binghamton, one hundred miles to Rochester and one hundred sixty miles to Buffalo from Cortland, N.Y.
Campus community members can access a Zipcar in four elementary steps:
- Join the service at zipcar.com/cortland
- Reserve the car online
- Swipe in the car with your Zipcard (the keys already are in there)
- Drive away, remembering to come back the car by the end of the reservation
SUNY Cortland wasn’t focused solely on convenience when it welcomed the Zipcar to campus. Albeit the service uses normal, gasoline-powered vehicles, it is considered an environmentally friendly alternative. That’s because Zipcar’s presence on other college and university campuses has resulted in a drop in congestion and parking request, and therefore a reduction in car emissions.
The car sharing service is one of SUNY Cortland’s latest “green” efforts to manage resources effectively and protect the environment. In 2015, the College was named one of the greenest colleges in the U.S. by BestColleges.com — the only campus in the State University of Fresh York system on the list.
One Zipcar has the capability to take approximately fifteen personally wielded cars off the road, according to the company’s studies. And in terms of cost, Zipcar members pay only for the time they use a car, which can save up to seventy percent of a student’s total transportation costs.
International students can use the service by providing extra documents. Utter details on how to register for Zipcar, make a reservation and build up entry into a car are available online.