the Mark Pike

This is my whole-hearted endorsement of Zipcar.

For reals, click here and get $25 free driving right now and thank me later.

Since graduating from school, I’ve been living in metropolitan areas where owning a car and trying to park was simply not worth the time, money, and energy. Plus, public transportation options in Washington, DC and San Francisco, CA were so readily available that keeping up with a vehicle just didn’t make sense.

However, each month there seem to be enough random errands, road trips, etc. that having access to a car was still really important. I didn’t want to be the guy that always bums keys from his friends (thanks, guys!), so I looked into other options.

I walked by Zipcar parking spaces all the time in DC so I knew that it might be a convenient option, but I had no idea just how easy the system was until I signed up at the beginning of the year.

In fact, the first time I used Zipcar was on the way back from a vacation when I realized we accidentally booked a return ticket to a different airport than the one where my girlfriend left her car. The cost of a taxi up to BWI from DCA was quoted at more than $80. Renting a Zipcar for 2 hours? Less than $20. We reserved it the same day, didn’t have to deal with the hassle of rental car company paperwork, and the car was sitting there waiting for us to wave the magic membership card on the windshield.

Sure, there are some drawbacks. 

Right now you have to return the car from the same spot you rented it from, so you can’t drive one-way home from IKEA with a trunkful of Ektorp sofas and several dozen swedish meatballs. The likely issue with this is that the registration system is not advanced enough to compute “smart reservations” wherein you leave a car somewhere and then another Zipcar user picks it up and takes it back to its permanent parking space (much less a completely distributed network that does not rely on permanent spaces). Bike-sharing programs have dealt with this “free-rider” issue of people using the bikes to only zoom downhill by offering cheap rides and free credits for those who take bikes back to their uphill parking locations.

Another minor frustration is that many Zipcar users are infrequent drivers and therefore get lost much more frequently than regular drivers who are more familiar with the road system. This leads to late returns, which can have a domino effect and really screw up your schedule. For example, I rented a truck for one hour in San Francisco to pick up a new bed-frame. The person who had the truck before me was 30 minutes late, which only left me 30 minutes to complete my errand. Zipcar penalizes you $50 per hour if you’re late, so this prevents a lot of abuse in the system— but it happens.

They leave a fuel card in the car, so you can always fill up for free and you’re supposed to leave the tank at least 1/4 full (I always leave it 3/4 full!). They even give you a credit of one free hour if you take the car through a car-wash!

The best Zipcar feature, by far, is the mobile phone application.

While you’re on the go, you can search for close-by available Zipcars using an incredible map overlay. There’s over 20 cars within a half-mile of my apartment— everything from Beamers to Tacomas to Priuses. You can rent for as cheap as $7/hr. You can make your reservation via the mobile app on your smartphone and even— this blows my mind— unlock the car using your phone! The keys are always left in the vehicle and you have to swipe in at the beginning of your reservation with your membership card to identify yourself. One time, I accidentally left my wallet with the membership card locked in the car and didn’t think I’d be able to unlock the vehicle. But then I remembered the amazing mobile phone application that sends a signal to outer space and UNLOCKS the vehicle! Awesome.

As the network economy evolves and data-sharing via social apps is widely adopted, I think the co-ownership model will be incredibly convenient for many of us. Right now, you can count me as a happy customer.

If you want to join Zipcar today, check out this referral code that hooks you up with $25 free driving (and I get $25 too!). It’s only $50 per year, and there’s a one-time $25 application fee. 

Join Zipcar and get $25 in free driving!

As you can tell, I think it’s totally worth it. I look forward to sharing a car with you soon!

“What happened here?”

The question lingered in the air as our rental car sped along Route 54 in Kansas, somewhere between Wichita and Dodge City. We had no idea exactly where we were, or what had happened until we saw a sign.

GREENSBURG, KS
Rebuilding…
STRONGER, BETTER, GREENER
Home of the “BIG WELL”

That’s when I remembered the Tornado—and everything that came after it.

(Thanks to Chris Cheatham’s consistent coverage of Greensburg on Green Building Law Update)

On May 4, 2007, Greensburg was hit by an EF5 tornado, which destroyed 95% of the city and left the other 5% severely damaged (see e.g., Mike Theiss’ photos, and Jon Person’s photos). Only one building was left standing on Main Street (it’s now an antique store).

But the city decided to rebuild; and, it decided to rebuild “green.” In the words of then-Governor Kathleen Sebelius, “We have an opportunity of having the greenest town in rural America.”

Greensburg had to decide what policies to enact in order to achieve such a green goal. Just 12 weeks after the tornado flattened the town, the City Council presented a thorough long-term plan (.pdf, amazing that they made this so quickly and so well). The Public Square Steering Committee stated it’s vision statement therein:

“Blessed with a unique opportunity to create a strong community devoted to family, fostering businesses, working together for future growth.”

On December 17, 2007, Greensburg made history (.pdf) by being the first place in the country to require all city-owned buildings larger than 4,000 square feet to become certified LEED® Platinum by the U.S. Green Building Council and requiring all city-owned buildings to reduce energy use by 42% over current building requirements.

As a passerby on a road trip, it was inspiring to look out the car windows and see such an incredible story of rebirth in America’s Heartland.

Check out the full photo set from our drive.

In under 24 hours, I recently designed and built a web presence for a symposium on green building law. The entire process was one of the most exciting experiences I have had in law school

As the Technical Editor of William & Mary’s Environmental Law & Policy Review, my main job description is to maintain the journal’s online resources. The journal publishes several volumes a year, and each article’s citations and sources must be checked by our staff and uploaded to a shared server.

Prior to this year, the journal did not have much of a public face on the Internet. We are mentioned on William & Mary’s website, but the administration controls that space. This makes it very difficult to promote our scholarship and comment on how our work is applicable to contemporary environmental policy issues. Without an online publishing interface, we were locked out of the discussion; constantly playing catch-up with an archaic printing press process.

Now, with our newly designed website we were able to host a symposium that instantly put us in the mix. The summaries of the panels we hosted this past weekend have been getting views from all over the globe. Our old journal articles are getting a second-wind. We are influencing the policy discussion.

And, I learned a ton about Web 2.0 during the process. In an effort to give symposium attendees the chance to broadcast their commentary onto the site, we not only had comments enabled, but also embedded a box that featured a stream of live Twitter messages.

I had no idea how powerful Twitter was before the symposium. I’ve long been a fan of Facebook’s status messages and assumed Twitter was just another overlapping service. It’s not. By utilizing a “hashtag”, Twitter users at the symposium could essentially create an impromptu digital huddle and share their reactions with fellow-attendees, as well as folks thousands of miles away. This is something Facebook fails at because of its reliance on the friend-based social network instead of an interest-based network. Eventually, I see the two services merging and Web 2.0’s collective knowledge offerings will be even more powerful. Very exciting.

After an intellectually stimulating weekend, the journal has a permanent online home; and, I madesome new friends in the field of green building law!