How Zipcar is Digging 800 Vehicles Out of the Snow

A Zipcar employee finishes digging out a vehicle after the blizzard. Courtesy of Zipcar

By Kelly O'Brien

January 29, 2015

2 minutes to read

While some Bostonians might be worried about saving that one parking spot they spent hours shoveling out, Zipcar employees are working to uncover an entire fleet of vehicles.

“Our team was out there starting early yesterday until fairly late,’’ Lisa Feldman, Zipcar Boston’s general manager, said. She said there are only six people within the company dedicated full time to snow removal efforts. Fortunately, those six people had some extra help.

“A lot of our corporate office folks offered to take on a location near their homes,’’ Feldman said. And some of the “vendors’’ who own the lots where Zipcars are parked had their own teams at work.

Feldman said as of Thursday morning, only about 15 of Zipcar’s more than 300 outdoor locations still needed attention. She expected almost all parking spots to be free and clear by Thursday evening, with a few stragglers possibly needing to wait until Friday morning.

“A couple of ones where maybe there’s a big pile of snow,’’ Feldman said.

Zipcar says it has 800 vehicles parked outside, and 1,000 outdoor parking spots, in the Boston network, which is second only to New York City. Feldman pointed out that Zipcar has been operating in the area for 15 years, so snowstorms are nothing new.

She also said the size of this particular snowfall wasn’t as much of a problem as the extra ground added by the recent launch of Zipcar’s ONE>WAY beta program.

In December, Zipcar announced a program that allows members to pick-up and drop-off their cars in different locations, instead of always making a round trip. The set-up for the first time required Zipcar to have more parking spots than vehicles.

“We did have probably double the amount of outdoor spaces as last year,’’ Feldman said.

The most challenging problems were coordinating plowing schedules with vendors and, in some spots, making sure that uncovered spaces were not buried again later by people shoveling nearby.

“It’s a little bit of science and a little bit of art,’’ Feldman said.

Zipcar says it has removed any vehicles or parking spots that still need to be cleared from its app, so members can reserve cars like usual without worrying they’ll arrive to find their Honda Fit underneath a pile of snow.