beigemartin

Excellent, thank you. I also use feedly. It allows me to monitor various different sites in one place.

Just to add my voice for how useful the RSS feed is.

I'm pretty sure they're different fleets. I think in order to be able to honour return journey reservations they need to keep the fleets segregated.

Taxi companies, Uber, couriers, black cabs - none of these pay business rates and all use parking spaces. "Southwark are also going to market again for their car sharing relationship. This would add extra pressure to insure against the loss of this relationship by Zipcar. " I suspect Southwark have granted them temporary rights until they go 'to market'. He is suggesting that by giving them rights of use NOW it has increased the pressure on Zipcar to remain (presumably either by through the sunk cost of becoming active there, or by proving the value of Flex to themselves). I do not think he has suggested Avis will continue to have rights should they fail to come to an arrangement with Southwark.

But to be honest, if the parking on a given street is not charged I don't see why Zipcar should have to pay anyway. * The cars are used by residents; why should a cost be created and then passed on to these residents when other car owners would not be paying? * No other person who uses their vehicle for commercial purposes would be expected to pay

"I think it must be, if they are "circumventing" paying charges and are losing their relationship with Southwark." Couldn't they be circumventing the "great deal of money for each formal and reserved parking space" by paying a lesser amount for flexible use of the available parking?

I don't see in that message where is says they don't charge for parking outside the 'formal and reserved parking space'. Implied by omission?

"they aren't paying" What makes you think they don't have a commercial arrangement to pay the local authority for the use?

Car2go tried and failed at the one-way minute charging hire model Zipcar are now trying, I think at least partly due to uncooperative parking restrictions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car2Go I've been with family using it in another city and thought it was great - it overcomes many of the logistical / planning issues of using Zipcar. They're only just launching so I suspect they have had to position the fleet without many active users, hence some cars parked and left unused. Hopefully they will succeed and provide an alternative to car ownership.