I had a client at Northcote Point who needed urgent assistance yesterday. They were 900m from the nearest bus stop of decent frequency, and too far from the ferry terminal for that to be an option.

This was finally a chance to try the Cityhop service. This is how it went.

From reading the site and rulebook, I knew that Cityhop had certain amenities available in the car, and some quite reasonable expectations of its users.
- There was a fuelcard and damage logbook in the glovebox.
- There was a carpark building entry/exit pass under the visor, which you use to get into and out of the carpark building.
- Users are expected to return the car with at least a quarter-tank of fuel.

I tried to book the car online while heading towards Britomart on the train. The train arrived at 2:48pm so I was going to book the car from 3pm to 5:30pm.

Technology failed me and my laptop and cellphone refused to co-operate to get me online until I’d ejected the batteries from both as punishment. By then, I’d arrived at Britomart to had to put them away to get off the train. I tried again up in the CPO building. By now it was 2:55.

I booked and got my confirmation e-mail immediately. Cool. Three minutes later I was at the car in the Downtown carpark so I eagerly got the Cityhop card out and touched it against the car reader.

It flashed red and the car stayed locked. So I tried again. Same.

To be fair, I’d only made the booking about three or four minutes before arriving at the car, so this was not unexpected and can hardly be blamed on anyone but me for not booking til the last minute. Had my cellphone worked and had I been able to book it sooner, all would have been well.

A quick call to Cityhop’s support number revealed that they had not yet sent the booking to the car and that they’d do so straight away. Two minutes later, I got the green light and the car unlocked. I was in.

Once inside I decided to spend a minute to familiarise myself with the car. I found the carpark pass under the visor as expected and a folder in the glovebox.

I opened it up to reveal a bit of a mess.

I also noticed that the previous user had left the handbrake off.

It seems users don’t care so much when using something they don’t own – the receipts rammed into the fuelcard pocket showed that some previous users may have been a little careless.

Next I turned the car on, and looked at the fuel gauge. Three bars – low. Starting the engine immediately had it drop to two bars and the fuel icon began flashing. Grr!

But even worse, they’d left the radio tuned to The Rock.

I must emphasise at this point that these circumstances were obviously caused by the previous person who hired the car, not Cityhop themselves.

So. Time to go. I drove to the exit, grabbed the carpark pass and slotted it into the exit barrier machine. It gave me a cryptic message “Wrong presence” (huh?) and the barrier remained firmly down. Tried again. Same.

It turned out that the previous user (who was really starting to get on my nerves by this point) didn’t bother to use the carpark pass when returning the car. They instead hit the button for a normal ticket instead and presumably dumped it. The carpark system was telling me the car never entered therefore it can’t leave.

The carpark attendant had to sort this one out. Finally I was out of the building.

I filled up at the Shell station on Beach Rd (note to self: get the odometer reading before leaving the car) and proceeded up Stanley St to the motorway, where I promptly got stuck in the ramp signal queue for fifteen minutes. I’d forgotten about this “traffic congestion” thing.

Once I’d got past that, I found the Mitsubishi i-car surprisingly nice to drive. Being a 600cc rear-mounted engine, I was expecting it to be gutless, but it felt more like a 1.5 litre car – not grunty, but still able to pick up speed quite well, and quite smoothly.

When I finally made it to my destination at Northcote Point, the client was impressed at the car they saw and it became quite a conversation piece.

Partway through the job I realised I would need to stay for another hour. This was easily sorted with a call to Cityhop to extend the booking.

I think my luck had got better for the afternoon too. The trip back to downtown was far quicker and I was met with green lights all the way along Fanshawe St right into the parking building. The run of green lights helped alleviate the earlier frustration with the car’s last user and the traffic. I parked, unloaded, used the card to lock the car, and happily walked away.

All up I made three phonecalls to Cityhop during the booking – once for the car not letting me in, once about the fuel level, and once to extend the booking. The staff were efficient and friendly.

It is interesting that the booking system has a manual component to it in that the staff have to send it to the car. I guess this means you have to make after-hours bookings before it’s actually after hours. I guess it means Cityhop may not be appropriate for after-hours emergencies.

Overall, I liked the experience. How the previous driver had left the car was a bit annoying, but with shared car services I guess you’ll have to put up with below-par fellow users from time to time. The car was neat and tidy overall, and it ran well, the staff on the phone were friendly and efficient, and I’d definitely continue to use the service.

This has brought me another step closer to deciding to sell my car.

Last week I had to urgently swap a faulty PC from a Northcote School with a replacement one from an Albany supplier, then I got an urgent call to an Epsom school that evening.

By car, it was easy to swap the PC but then I got stuck in very bad traffic getting to the Epsom school, which happens to be quite close to Boston Rd Station.
If it weren’t for the car, I would have lost about 30 minutes having to go from Northcote to town to pick up a CityHop car, return to Northcote, pick up a faulty PC, return it to a supplier in Albany to swap. But, keeping the car to get back to town, by dropping the hire car back off at downtown and shooting up on the train to the Epsom callout I would have got that time back instead of getting stuck in the start of CBD peak traffic.

It’ll be interesting to see how the net gains and losses pan out during November.

Yesterday also involved two return trips to the North Shore, both in traffic.

I’ve figured that to do everything I did yesterday, a train into town plus the hire car again would not have saved any time but would have been far less stressful. The bulk of the traffic was south of the Bridge. I would have used the hire car just for the Shore part of the second trip.

So I need to try to figure out ways to use time better. I’m hoping time on the bus, or train, when they’re not too crowded, could be used to do some admin work on the laptop. This would be better than time behind the wheel where one must 100% concentrate on driving. (Jarbury, could this be a new twist on a time savings benefit?)

I’m also looking forward to the odd trip home on the ferry after stressful days on the Shore.

And of course, walking would be light exercise time. I might get a pedometer to see how much walking I end up doing.

As November 1 draws nearer, I’m often comparing how each day goes and how I would have done the same without a car. What will I miss? What won’t I miss?

I’ll miss the obvious flexibility of being able to jump in the car anytime, but I won’t miss this:

Queued for the ramp signals, SH16 to SH1 northbound link, 4:30pm Thursday October 15.
After the signals it was also stop-start traffic until the Bridge.

I’m wondering how I’m going to adjust to loss of flexibility of being able to jump in the car to get parts, return faulty items to suppliers and to hop between jobs. I think I’ll just have to plan trips better and further in advance. This will probably help with efficiency, allocating set days of the week to do ‘courier’ work with the hire car instead of making more trips transporting less equipment around per trip.Hopefully it’ll get me into good planning habits too.