Baylor University plans Sept. 7 to roll out a Zipcar program, which allows students, faculty and staff to rent one of two school vehicles hourly or by the day.

Baylor will be one of two Texas colleges — Rice University is the other — to offer the Zipcar program, among more than 100 colleges and universities participating nationwide.

Matt Penney, Baylor’s director of parking and transportation, said one of the school’s primary reasons for offering the program is to make cheap and easy transportation available to students who don’t bring cars to school, particularly international students.

A Baylor University “Zipcar” parked behind the Bill Daniel Student Center on campus. The school plans to make the cars available for hourly or daily rental beginning Sept. 7.
Jerry Larson/WacoTribune-Herald

“If you’re an international student, or just didn’t bring a car here to campus, and you want to run some errands here in the town of Waco, you can take the car for an hour,” Penney said. “You sign up online for what time you want the car, go use it and bring it back. It’s a great little program.”

Participants sign up on www.zipcar.com/baylor for an initial $35 fee, which Penney said can be applied toward hourly or daily rental. The cost is $8 an hour on weekdays and $9 an hour on weekends. The per-day rate is $66 on weekdays, $72 on weekends.

Gas and insurance are included in the rental, and the cars may be driven 180 miles per rental period, according to Zipcar’s website. All drivers’ licenses are accepted, including international students’, the website says.

The cars can be reserved online, and program enrollees will have a “Zipcard” that they wave over a sensor on the car that unlocks the car. Keys and gas cards are kept inside the cars.

Limitations are that enrollees must be at least 18 years old and have no “major violations,” which are listed on the website, in the past three years.

Baylor has two Zipcars, a Honda Civic and a Honda Insight hybrid, and Penney said the school will consider adding more cars if the demand is there.

“First, we just want to see how it works,” Penney said. “It’s just kind of a pilot program, and we want to see how it goes.”

So far, indications are that there will be plenty of demand. The Zipcars, which are already parked on campus, have drawn interest.

“I immediately got phone calls from staff members,” Penney said. “This past week, parents who saw that, particularly parents from up north, said, ‘Oh, you’ve got a Zipcar, and they already knew about it and knew about how it worked. ”

Astrid Loomans, a freshman at Baylor, perfectly fits the profile of the students the school aims to help with the Zipcar program. An international student from Belgium, Loomans said she thinks the program is a great idea and one she plans to use.

“I saw the brochure and immediately was interested,” Loomans said. “I’m considering it for going off-campus for a day or so. It’d just be nice to have a car.”

Loomans said she also thinks the daily rental price is reasonable, especially if a few students want to pool their money for a day trip or a weekend. The cars can be reserved for as long as four days at a time.

“My friends and I were talking about going to Austin for a day, so that would be a good deal,” she said of the daily rental cost.

Baylor spokeswoman Lori Fogleman said “there are several faculty who have come to Baylor from other institutions in places like Boston or other places that have the service or have used it before, and they’re just thrilled.”

About the only drawbacks Fogleman sees to the program are making all students and faculty aware of it and getting them used to the ease and convenience of the program.

“For some of us, we kind of go, ‘Huh?’ because we’re not used to it,” Fogleman said. “But even if your car is just in the shop and you need to get somewhere, that’s a way that you can use (the program).”

twoods@wacotrib.com

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