Zipcar puts six cars on the campus of Michigan State University

Car sharing has been a long time in coming to Michigan State University. In fact, a grassroots Facebook "group" was formed more than a year ago called "MSU students, faculty and community members for Zipcar on campus!"

According to this informal social media campaign, at least 530 people will see their efforts come to fruition during the official launch of Zipcar this Wednesday at the MSU Union. Zipcar will begin with six available cars on campus for users and will grow the program as needed.

Car sharing not only brings convenience to the community and is estimated to take 15-20 cars off the road per shared car, but it will do all of this without requiring any investment from the university. In fact, as the six Zipcars require leased parking spots paid by Zipcar, MSU stands to earn a bit of revenue from the project.

Initially the Zipcars will be located at the International Center, near Abrams Planetarium and between Holden and Wilson Halls.

"It’ll be like a mini Auto Show," says Jennifer Battle of the MSU Office of Campus Sustainability. "Zipcar uses a lot of cool technology that makes the cars easy to access. For example, you don’t open the car with a key. You open it with a keycard and the keys are inside.

"On Wednesday, the Zipcar team will be on hand to talk about the cars and tell the Zipcar story," Battle says, "and MSU will be there to talk about why we are doing a car sharing program."

Those reasons don’t only include the grassroots efforts of the MSU community.

After an internal study, the Office of Campus Sustainability found that one of the primary reason faculty and staff don’t use sustainable transportation to work is the fear of not being able to leave in an emergency — such as a sick child.

"This kind of alleviates that concern," says Battle.

Source: Jennifer Battle, MSU Office of Campus Sustainability

Writer: Natalie Burg, Interim News Editor