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Baltimore to start a car-sharing business
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The other day the Sun reported that the city of Baltimore wants to start a non-profit car-sharing service. The for-profit company ZipCar already operates a car-sharing business in Baltimore and did not think it was a good idea to expand. So Baltimore is about to create what amounts to a government run competitor. BaltimoreCarShare will be the name of the non-profit and it has already received $60,000 from the city.
I am happy to see the city trying to cut down on the number of cars on the road. I am not happy with the city creating yet another government run entity. The bureaucrats of Baltimore have an established track record of being unable to run an operation like this. If the for-profit market thought it was a bad idea to expand then this venture probably is going to need a lot of subsidies and very efficient management. It would have been a better idea just to ask (or calculate) Zipcar how much money they need to make a profit in an expanded service area and give them that amount of "grant" money ($60k or less of course) to run the new business (a business which they are experts in). Manipulating the market is never a good idea and in a normal world the city should have waited for it to become economically profitable for a for-profit to establish itself in the areas of the city that currently lack car-sharing services.
