On Oct. 8, a little bit before 1 p.m., thousands of people in and around the Twin Cities simultaneously learned they might need to start shopping for a car. That’s because HourCar, the Twin Cities’ nonprofit carsharing program that also operates Evie Carshare, announced it would cease operations on Oct. 15 as a result of a $625,000 funding gap.
Since their opening – HourCar in 2005 and Evie in 2022 – the programs have been funded through user fees along with public, private and philanthropic dollars. Between them, riders can reserve hybrid and electric cars at designated hubs for round trips or pick up a “free-floating” vehicle within specified zones in Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
For a $7 monthly fee, users – about 4,000 of them – borrowed a car for between about $10 and $14 per hour, an appealing prospect compared to paying for a loan, insurance, gas and maintenance every month.
Upon news of the closure, social media blew up with users’ frustration and confusion. Amid the upheaval, officials have quickly started asking why something so popular could close over so little money, and who might be able to come to the rescue.
On Bluesky – a social media network that can sometimes feel as though it is entirely populated by people passionate about transit issues – several posters said they were older adults who couldn’t afford to own a car. Another said they’d been using the service for 19 years.
“I LITERALLY *JUST* FINALLY GOT A COSTCO MEMBERSHIP BECAUSE I WAS USING HOURCAR/EVIE,” posted Aleta Perez.
In an interview, Perez told me they’d been using the service 3-4 times a month for at least eight years. They’d once owned a car, but as someone who worked from home and only needed to use it occasionally, the expense wasn’t worth it.
Where a carshare made sense, they said, was for something like a Costco run.
“I just made that lifestyle change decision of trying to save money with that,” Perez said. Without it, a trip to the giant wholesaler will likely involve an Uber or a Lyft and twice the expense of an Evie.
Public transportation would take an hour or more, Perez said, and would severely limit how many items they could actually purchase and carry home.
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to get a car,” Perez said. “But I don’t want to do that.”
Parry Cadwallader and his wife haven’t owned a car for years. He bikes, she takes the bus. HourCar and Evie were filling in the gaps.
“It’s sort of been incorporated into the daily, weekly, monthly fabric of our lives,” Cadwallader said.
Now, all of a sudden, there are uncertainties. Will they visit their parents less often? How will they get to medical appointments? What’s a trip to the grocery store look like now?
“Having an Evie available just removed that stress from an already very stressful life,” he said.
So now Cadwallader is looking at used cars – a friend recently sent him a link to a 1958 Fiat on bringatrailer.com – and trying to do the math.
Few people have been thinking about HourCar for as long as Mary Morse Marti, who in 2002 was the executive director of the Neighborhood Energy Connection. At the time, her group was looking for programs when some volunteers suggested carsharing.
“I responded to these volunteers, they formed sort of the core group of support, and then we developed it into an actual business plan, and we got some small grants and hired a team and launched in 2005,” said Marti, who left the NEC in 2015.
“If it goes away,” Marti said, “there will be a lot of residents of the Twin Cities who are now left with no other option than to become less connected to the places they need to to get to.”
Marti was especially frustrated by the size of the funding gap that had placed the organization in peril.
“It’s an embarrassment to me that Minneapolis and Saint Paul and Minnesota specifically cannot support this organization to the point where it’s viable,” she said. “Anything under a million dollars is pocket change for some of these organizations.”
She’d love to see the Metropolitan Council step up to operate it in addition to Metro Transit, or at least to fund it, she said.
In a statement, the Metropolitan Council told MinnPost, “HourCar is a valued Metropolitan Council partner, and we take the financial challenges it has shared seriously. As a provider of transit service in our region, Metro Transit will continue to seek ways to ensure riders know about all the transit options available to them.”
Not everyone has given up the fight.
Saint Paul City Councilor Molly Coleman (Ward 4) said the city had been planning to put additional funding toward the services in next year’s budget, and that she’d been in contact with people across all levels of government.
“There are a lot of people who want to save HourCar,” she posted on Bluesky.
But whether that’s something that can be done in a little under a week is a big question. Coleman admitted she was “not yet optimistic.”
And Rep. Katie Jones (DFL-Minneapolis) said she’d be working on a bill this session to ensure the city would have carshare options in the future – though she didn’t say whether that would necessarily be HourCar.
Minneapolis City Councilors Robin Wonsley and Soren Stevenson also released statements calling the news “especially disappointing,” with Wonsley saying she was working with city staff to help affected residents.
HourCar, for its part, has posted a guide outlining the metro area’s other transit options.
In the meantime, some carshare service users have planned a rally Oct. 13 at 6:00 p.m. at Government Plaza in downtown Minneapolis. “Come in an Evie if you can,” their flyer says. Others are planning for their last rides.
“I guess I’ll have to make a really big Costco run,” Perez said.
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