"Reporting from San Francisco -- Emily Castor's metallic gray Honda has been driven by dozens of people she's never met.
They treat it well, pay any tickets they get and do the dirty work of
finding a legal parking spot when they return it to her neighborhood
near Golden Gate Park.
Castor, 29, is pulling in
hundreds of dollars each month through one of several personal
car-sharing companies that have burgeoned in the Bay Area over the last
year. For $8 an hour or $45 a day, renters can climb behind the wheel of
her Civic. Insurance is included.
The Bay Area has become a laboratory for personal car-sharing, as well
as the broader "collaborative consumption" movement. Rooms in private
homes, outgrown children's clothes, parking spaces and more can be
rented, borrowed, bartered or gifted through a burgeoning number of
Web-based ventures...
According to research engineer Susan Shaheen of the Transportation
Sustainability Research Center, there are nine personal car-sharing
networks now operating in the U.S. and 25 globally..."
Read full article here.
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