By Robert Chappell
Madison Magazine
Special To Channel 3000

Move over, buckyball & biotech: The University of Wisconsin-Madison is about to become famous for, believe it not, cars.

Yup, cars.

The university is leasing three new cars as part of a program that will surely bring, if not fame at least the sincere appreciation of local environmentally conscious types who care about things like energy conservation and global warming and the basic quality of life-as-we-know-it energy issues.

By way of explanation, UW Transportation Services director Lance Lunsway notes that the university has been a leader in energy-efficient transportation for a while now. For example, fifty percent of the university's faculty and staff use transportation other than their own cars. Which means these people helpfully reduce downtown traffic congestion, free up parking spaces, and decrease the sum total of harmful emissions. By contrast, Lunsway says, most campuses would be thrilled to have that figure hit twenty percent. Still, he thinks the UW can do better. Among the transportation demand management strategies implemented since Lunsway came to Madison from Arizona State four years ago, for example, is the offer of free bus passes to all faculty, staff and students. Currently, nine thousand people use those passes to take eighty thousand free rides a month.

But there's one problem. You'd like to take the bus to campus in the morning, but you know you have errands to run between classes or on your lunch hour. So you have to drive, right?

Not anymore. After a year-long pilot, the university has signed a five-year contract with Madison-based Community Car to provide three shared cars on campus.

Community Car started in 2003 under the auspices of Madison Environmental Group by placing three cars around town and selling memberships allowing people to reserve and use the cars. A fourth vehicle, a Honda Civic, was parked in the ramp under Helen C. White Library on campus as a pilot to test carsharing service at UW, in a spot donated by the university.

That particular car was "hugely successful," says Community Car executive director Amanda White, and it soon became apparent that more cars on campus would be successful as well.

Lunsway was familiar with similar programs in Portland, Seattle and Boston, and sent out a nationwide request for proposals to get more shared cars on campus. Community Car came in with the best bid.

The contract was signed in September, and before the ink was dry the two new Priuses -- one at the University Hospital and one at the Biotech Building -- were on the road.

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