Two Westchester entrepreneurs have teamed with Mount Vernon city officials in a shared transportation program its partners called the first of its kind in the nation.
Starting this month, employees in Mount Vernon”™s planning and law departments will use leased cars from a private company during work hours and leave them parked in a public garage opposite City Hall for off-hours”™ use by Mount Vernon residents.
Residents will pay rental rates of about $10 per hour for the fuel-efficient cars, said Dwight McLeod, a Mount Vernon resident and principal of the city”™s partner company, Go-Eco Group L.L.C. He said the shared rentals will “compete with taxi cabs and give people greater mobility” in a community where many commuting residents do not own vehicles. Drivers are spared the usual owner costs for fuel, maintenance and insurance, which are borne by the company, McLeod said.
At a recent City Hall press conference announcing the program, Mount Vernon Mayor Clinton Young said the novel public-private car-sharing is part of the city administration”™s developing sustainable-practices program “that will place Mount Vernon on the leading edge of the green revolution.”
Mount Vernon Planning and Community Development Commissioner Jeffrey Williams said the pilot program will be funded with an approximately $625,000 energy efficiency conservation block grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, part of the federal stimulus funding package. The mayor said the federal grant applied to the program will save taxpayers replacement costs for decommissioned city vehicles and will subsidize the $25 membership cost that Go-Eco charges residents.
“It”™s a very unique municipal-residential car share program that we believe is the first of its kind in the nation,” said Kenneth Brookes, who founded the online-based Go-Eco in White Plains in late 2007.
Brookes said the Mount Vernon program will begin with two cars and eventually could have 15 vehicles in shared use. With wider adoption, “This is one of the single greatest steps that any city can take when it comes to smart, sustainable transportation,” he said.
“We”™re looking for very organic, measured growth,” said Brookes, who also is managing partner of Creative Artist Enterprises Group, a Manhattan marketing firm that matches celebrities with corporations. “We are not looking to be one of those dot-coms littered on the road to progress.”
For the car-share program, Go-Eco has privately partnered with The Mint Organization L.L.C., an alternative New York City car-sharing service that will supply cars in Mount Vernon from its 100-vehicle fleet. “That”™s sort of the model that we will be emulating,” said Brookes. “They”™re sort of our coach.”
Mint”™s owner and CEO, Richard Ull, also owns Car Park Systems, which operates about 50 parking facilities in the metropolitan area. Ull launched Mint in October 2008 with 25 vehicles at 10 locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The Chelsea-based business has quadrupled in fleet size and tripled its number of locations in the two boroughs. “We have more locations than Hertz does” in the city, Ull said in Mount Vernon. “Our claim to fame is convenience.”
“We have the moms and dads who take their kids to school for an hour or two” in cars sporting the Mint NY logo. “We have the weekend users who take the cars out to the Jersey Shore” or for a day of shopping, said Ull. “It works well in any urban environment.”
Ull said his company is exploring a business-to-business program for corporate users. And with Go-Eco as a partner, it is looking to expand the public-private car-sharing program into other municipalities both in Westchester and the tri-state area.
