Archive for October, 2007

Zipcar, Flexcar merge fueling car share growth

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

Zipcar and Flexcar are two car share companies that Cityhop has spent a lot of time learning about. They are Amercia’s leading car share companies and today October 31 they have merged creating a huge international network that will deliver more benefits to members and accelerate their growth.

Zipcar is committed to bring car sharing to more people in more places, something Cityhop also aspires too. All three companies provide cars by the hour to members.

Car sharing programmes are proven to have significant positive environmental and social impacts. National studies show that each shared car replaces up to 20 privately owned vehicles. Car sharing members report they drive a lot less, are more likely to shop locally and most report a 47 % increase in public trsansit trips and an increase is biking and walking.

At current membership adoption rates Zipcar predict that in a city with a populaiton of 600,000 residents, if a conservative 10 % adoption rate to car share occurred, that would result in 60,000 car sharing members taking 24,000 cars off the road. Zipcar already has a 10% adoption rate in its well established metro market areas. This augers well for these communities resulting in less land and financial resources being required to provide parking infrastructure.

New carparks added to Cityhop spots

Monday, October 29th, 2007

Cityhop, New Zealand’s first car share company has added some new locations thanks to member demand. The first of these is The Strand in Parnell. Says Victoria, “We thought it made sense to put a car at our sister JUCY Rentals location to support some of the many commuters who work in Parnell.

Then there are all the apartments buildings in the area, student accommodation and much more.

So students catch on to cityhop!

Other new spots to get cars are Beach Road to support those who live in and around the Scene apartments.

Aspen House at 62 Emily Place is the other central city location to support workers and residents in the City.

If you have ideas on where else Cityhop should put a spot, remember to tell us. Email info@cityhop.co.nz. We are here to help our members.

Another 5 tips to reduce your carbon footprint – Join Cityhop

Thursday, October 18th, 2007

Want to find out if you can do more about global warming? Think that one person can’t really make a any impact. Well that ‘s where you are wrong. The more of us who all do lots of little things – make a difference.  Interested in finding out how big your carbon footprint is?

First, what is a carbon footprint? It’s the total carbon dioxide emissions we create when we drive, fly or use electricity.

So what can we do?

1. Drive less – join Cityhop, New Zealand’s first car share company offering cars by the hour. Talk your company into getting a corporate membership so you can all cityhop.

Buy locally produced goods. Turn down the heater, check the last post for other electricity related tips on reducing energy use.

Check out TerraPass – a site with loads more ideas on balancing the emisisons you can’t reduce.  Terrapass members pay for the energy they can’t reduce. Through projects like wind farms and plantings they have eliminated over 420 million pounds of carbon dioside emissions.

Global warming is a global problem requiring action at a global level. That’s where we all come in.

There’s lots of companies like Cityhop that are making a difference. We want to ‘drive change’ and encourage people to think about whether they really need to make that car trip. Could they bus, walk, train, ferry? Then when you need a car cityhop!

Every day we are talking to business and individuals trying to find the enthusiastic ones who recognise that we need to change habits and create a sustainable future together.

Drive change, join Cityhop today.

Five ways to be more eco-friendly

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007

Every day we hear about how the climate is changing. But how can we make a difference easily. Is it too hard? Does one person changing their behaviour make an iota of difference?

YES!

So what can you do? 1.The first and most useful thing is to reduce your car use. Too many of us use our cars with only ourselves in them. Do we really need to make that journey?

Overseas car share members say that once they joined a car share company like Cityhop they began to think more about whether they really needed to make their car trip. And they got fitter!

What else can you do?

2. It’s easy to recycle. Councils make it easy to collect your bottles, cans and newspaper to recycle. Keep your bins food free so then most of your rubbish at your desk can  go into the paper rubbish. Watch your wheelie bin empty!

3. Start a worm farm, all your food scraps can go into a lidded container and when it is full put it in the worm farm and watch your garden grow from the worm compost. 

4. This one’s really easy – turn lights off and check all your plugs and make sure they aren’t turned on. One of the biggest wastes of energy is leaving things like cellphone chargers in the wall sucking energy. Turn them off until you need to sue them.

5. When you join Cityhop we give you a cloth shopping bag. Keep it with you, buy more of these kind of bags. Lots of retailers are starting to use them too. Keep one wrapped up small with a rubber band in your bag or in your desk drawer for when you go shopping.

See, it is easy – lots of little things that we can all do that will make a difference.

AUT students advertise Cityhop

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

Cityhop was given a chance to present to 60 AUT university students doing the advertiisng creativity course. Three student’s campaigns were then chosen to be Cityhop’s advertising material.

Mel Brook and Matt Williams pictured at right with Tim Alpe and Victoria Carter, designed the AUT students with Cityhop teamcampaign on the direct mail shots and billboards. They are pictured holding the clever cut out cars they created that have been offerred to commuters and inner city dwellers to encourage them to cityhop!

A campaign “Use our car not yours”, aimed at corporates encouraging car share use was created by Nicola Henderson and Louise Larkin.

“Disposable relationship” a campaign created by Vincent Sherry and Harry Singh  is a humerous campaign appearing on the sides of some of the cars. With slogans like,”Ready when you are,” “Use me and never take me home”, they are bound to put a smile on people’s faces!

“The quality of the work produced by the students was outstanding,” said Victoria.  “All credit to their teachers Jane Berney and Paul White.”

AUT public relations students Louise Vallant, Andrew Gifford and Lisa Lloyd Taylor also assisted with some of the profile raising of Cityhop.

Go green- join Cityhop- get an eco-friendly bag!

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

Join Cityhop and receive an eco-friendly eco-bag. Cityhop wants to encourage people to produce less waste and reduce their rubbish.  Recycle, reduce, reuse.

So while stocks last every new member will receive a smart white shoulder bag to put groceries and other stuff that is sometimes carted around in a plastic bag!

For our media launch Cityhop used the bags as media kits as part of our desire to be environmentally friendly and sustainable. Even the Prime Minister has a cityhop bag.

Say no to plastic and recycle what you can. See the Reduce Rubbish Blogroll for more ideas.

Cityhop is a new generation company. Everything we do we think is there a better way to do it. Could we be more eco-friendly. That’s why we encourage everything to be on-line. We even invoice via email!

Who is behind Cityhop?

Friday, October 12th, 2007

Victoria is the CEO of Cityhop. You might say she was born with some green blood. Her mum would say she has always been persuading her family to do things that are eco-friendly – from growing vegetables in clay believing  as a 9 year old she could create another Findhorn to being an early converter to worm farms. 

Even last weekend she had her kids helping her in the garden recycling weedmats and laying bark!

Victoria would probably say her first foray into local body politics was when she complained about the Council giving Aucklanders larger wheelie bins. So she was quite satisfied when in her time on council it became obvious that ratepayers could not afford the ongoing cost of getting rid of so much of their rubbish and wheelie bins were made smaller!

Victoria is the main author on the cityhop blog. She has been in the communications industry for over 25 years consulting to companies ranging from TVNZ to small architectural practices. Early childhood education is her other passion.

Ironically Victoria also loves cars and could be found at the Grand Prix in earlier years! Her brother drives a Maserati. These days Victoria drives the Sirion and says getting into the smallest of parks has never been so easy. She likes the Sirion and has researched that it is actually one of the most environmentally friendly cars of its class.

Cityhop – affordable access to cars by the hour – Where?

Friday, October 12th, 2007

Where in Auckland are the cityhop spots? Cityhop started in Auckland CBD – with parks in Downtown, Victoria Street and the Civic. Yep, they are all Auckland City Council carparks because Auckland City wants to encourage more people out of their cars.

Auckland City has lots of other carparks around the City where you might find a cityhop spot in the future. But you got to tell us where you want the parks.

George and Peter have emailed us and said they would like a carpark in or near K Road. No problem, we’ve told them if they can sign up around 6 to 10 more members we’ll put a park in the Council K Road carpark in Mercury Lane.

Liz and Sam emailed us to say what about a carpark in Ponsonby. It’s a long road we said – where would attract most people?  We’ll see what we can come up with. In Australia, our colleagues at Flexicar tell us the council let them put cityhop spots on the road – brightly painted. How cool would that be to encourage people out of their cars and onto public transport and car share when they needed a car.

What would make you like a park? We can’t promise anything but we can investigate its viability.

Cityhop – easy to operate -car share

Friday, October 12th, 2007

One of our new members took the car out for the first time and came back with some helpful tips.

She suggested we must make sure people know cityhop cars are all manual. Hey, who doesn’t know how to drive a stick shift? Well, apparantly people can’t! So for the timing being cityhop is manual only!

 We have petrol cards in the car but it was pointed out if you don’t know where the Shell petrol station is you’re lost! So we’ve now put a list in the cars with the fuel card so you can figure out which is closest to you. We chose Shell because there are a few close to the carparks where Cityhop is!

If you have ideas on making cityhop more user friendly – add them on here. We like to make sure we are serving you the best we can.�

Reducing company cars and cutting costs

Thursday, October 11th, 2007

69,000 Aucklanders drove a company car to work on Census Day 2006. Up 13,000 cars since 2001. Even more sad is that according to new registrations company car aren’t getting any smaller. The engine size is getting larger. In fact there were more deregistrations of smaller cars.

With congestion costs being quoted as being millions of dollars when will more businesses and government departments looks seriously at encouraging public transport use? More to the point when will Inland Revenue remove FBT from those employers who pay their staff to use public transport.

Isn’t that one of those daft bureaucratic things – one arm of Government spending a fortune on sustainability while the other arm holds back encouraging and supporting public transport use!

Does your company have a workplace travel plan? Why don’t you ask why you don’t. Could more people carpool? Rideshare? Catch public transport and cityhop when they need a car for emergencies?

If companies are serious about saving money then get rid of the company car. Reward those people who reduce congestion – give them a cityhop card!