| | Published April 29th, 2009
| WeCar: Earth Day Innovation at St Mary's
| | By Sophie Braccini |  | | This Prius, on the St Mary's campus, is part of the WeCar program Photo Rob Lucacher
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Saint Mary's college and Enterprise Rent-A-Car are teaming up to provide students, staff, and professors with the ability to rent environmentally efficient vehicles to meet their short term transportation needs.
The program is called WeCar. The service is a web-based system for reserving use of one of the dedicated cars that will be stationed on campus as part of the program. It allows users to rent a car, for a minimum of an hour, to run their errands or fill whatever local transportation need they might have.
"This is a great opportunity for Saint Mary's to demonstrate innovation in how we service the transportation needs of our faculty and students; WeCar fills a gap in local transportation requirements currently not served, " said Saint Mary's Director of Community Relations Tim Farley, and we are now beginning to register people for the program."
In order to participate, users have to be currently affiliated with the College. They pre-register for the program and once approved receive a registration card that has a smart chip imbedded in it. When users want to book a vehicle, they go to a web site and reserve the time slot they need. At the time of their reservation, users walk to the car, take out their card and flash it over the dashboard area. The car already knows the user's appointment, it recognizes his/her personal smart card, opens its door for him/her, and is ready to go. The user is automatically charged.
"It's a great idea," said Andy Hsu, a senior in Finance, "a lot of students don't have a car, nothing is close in Moraga, and it's a hybrid fleet, it's green, and that's important to me." The initial fleet is comprised of two Toyota Prius (or is it Prii?)
According to Julie Antonio, Manager of the WeCar program, the service is particularly well received in campuses with space restrictions. Tim Farley confirmed that the College would like to convince the freshman class to leave their cars behind, carpool to come to the campus and then use the mix of transportation means available without having to keep a car in Moraga. "Additionally, students save money since they don't have to buy, maintain and insure a car," added Antonio.
"That's a problem solver, this is really a good idea" was heard from students as they were coming to pick up brochures at the information booth that WeCar had set up on campus for Earth Day.
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA