[i]Flickr, Creative Commons.[i]
DCL
Except for borrowing mom's car, the best way to have access to an automobile without having to own one (with all the monetary and environmental costs that this implies) is to use a car-sharing service. Type "car sharing" plus your city name in Google to find out if a car sharing company operates in your area.
Getting Under-21 Drivers Hooked on Zipcar
The latest good news in the car-sharing world is that Zipcar, a huge car-sharing company with 400,000 members and 7,000 vehicles in the U.S, has decided to expand its coverage in the Boston-area to allow people under-21 - mostly students around the Harvard campus - to have access to its vehicles. It will add about 20 cars to the Harvard campus and 160 in the surrounding areas.
It's a great move because the younger someone gets used to car sharing, the more chances that they'll keep the habit. And there's no better way to reach influencers and well-connected people than the Havard campus. If Zipcar does a good job with its service, it should get some great word-of-mouth publicity.
A lot of other universities (Yale, Stanford, Brown, etc) have Zipcar vehicles on or near campus, but most are not available to students who are under 21, something that I hope will change after the Harvard experiment.
