By Scotty Schenck, news correspondent
Hertz left a void for students last year when its on-demand car service, though successful on campus, was declared a corporate failure and its cars disappeared from Northeastern. On June 30, 2014 Hertz cars vanished from Huntington, but another service took its place the very next day: Enterprise CarShare.
Senior buyer at Procurement Services at Northeastern University Bernard Grant and director of real estate development at NU Al Porro helped bring CarShare to campus. The service allows students, faculty and staff ages 18 and up to reserve and rent a car from Enterprise for anywhere from an hour to several days. After sitting down with Enterprise and going over the list of needs of Northeastern students, Porro and Grant cemented the partnership with Enterprise.
“CarShare by Enterprise happened to be starting up and looking to expand in the Boston area. The timing could not have been better for us,” Porro said. “They’ve been tailoring the program to our needs.”
Porro said having a majority of undergraduates able to access the vehicles was a priority. With the lowest rates in the market and gasoline included in the price of rental, Porro said they decided to go with Enterprise to replace Hertz.
Students can access these cars after they sign up for a membership with Enterprise, which has waived the first-year membership costs for students and made the application fee $10, when students use their Northeastern email. Students only need to have a valid US or international driver’s license and a credit or debit card in their name. Once they sign up, they can access the CarShare vehicles in the Boston area. It costs $7 an hour for an economy car, $8.70 for a standard, and $9.99 for specialty cars, with the first 180 miles free and a charge of $0.45 per mile afterwards.
Freshman chemical engineering major Adianna San Lucas said she was surprised at the low cost, expecting a car rental service to charge around $20 an hour. She also said she thinks the service would be useful for driving to her community service in South Boston because she usually has to get other services to pick her up.
“I always have to wait for incompetent Uber drivers,” San Lucas said.
Senior chemistry major Sriva Raghavan said that the car service may not be as useful to those who live in the area and have access to a vehicle because they live so close to Northeastern. However, Raghavan said this is not the truth for every student.
“I know a lot of my friends who are not from the Massachusetts area would definitely utilize it,” Raghavan said.
Phil Paul and Alex Brito stood outside the Marino Center informing students about CarShare. Paul said he has been working for a month at Northeastern, telling students about it and helping them sign up. He also said Zipcar, a competitor to Enterprise CarShare, has much more availability because it has been around in the Boston area for almost ten years, but cannot compete with the lower prices that Enterprise offers.
“I believe in the program. … I’m the type of person who can’t sell something they don’t believe in,” Paul said, who works for Moosylvania, an ad agency that works in Enterprises’ marketing wing for the CarShare program, said. “I think this is a really incredible program.”
Photo by Scotty Schenck
