Zipcar announced yesterday that it's partnering with the city of Seattle to provide Zipcar access to city employees—a great deal for city workers, who'll now have access to more than 60 Zipcars downtown. Yesterday, I met with new Seattle Zipcar general manager Carla Archambault and one of the company's New York-based communications consultants, Nick Sowards, at Zipcar's new downtown office, located in the old Department of Motor Vehicles licensing office on Third and Union.

From what I gathered during our 45-minute conversation, Zipcar is really moving its Seattle focus to center-city neighborhoods—that is, the neighborhoods where density is greatest and carsharing is already popular, like downtown and Capitol Hill. They're also increasing the variety of cars they offer, including high-end cars like BMWs and Volvos, which are apparently very popular here (a fact that surprised me, since—besides the fact that I prefer to drive hybrids for eco reasons—I won't spend more on a car than I absolutely have to. Are the rest of Seattle's Zipcar members somehow escaping the New Economy?) And they're "talking about doing more local promotions" with local companies, Archambault said—although it doesn't sound like the kind of partnerships Zipcars's predecessor Flexcar did with green groups like the Transportation Choices Coalition are in the works.

I asked Archambault why the company had essentially abandoned the South End—leaving just one car in Southeast Seattle, for example, and removing all the cars along the light-rail line just months before it opens. She said demand isn't high enough to justify keeping cars in the South End, and said the company's strategy is to "start in the city and move out"—lots of cars downtown now, and perhaps eventually more cars in neighborhoods further out (the neighborhoods where Zipcar used to have a presence).

I understand the rationale behind providing supply where demand is heavy, but the converse is also true: Because carsharing is an advertisement for itself, the presence of lots of cars in a neighborhood provides an incentive to sign up. You can't miss those bright-green Zipcar logos all over downtown; my guess is that if Zipcar put a similar effort into promoting itself in rapidly-gentrifying Columbia City or in places like Holly Park or Rainier Vista, people would decide signing up made sense there, too. The current strategy—driving away members like me, who would use Zipcar much more often if there was more than one car within a mile of my house, in hopes of eventually attracting new members as the company expands—is understandable, but not inevitable. I could see the opposite strategy working, too (and not just because I have a vested interest in seeing Zipcar expand geographically). As it is, members like me have little incentive to use Zipcar's service. And even if people like me do keep renewing our memberships (I use Zipcars in other cities and occasionally downtown, so it's worth the $50 a year) there's a reason members like me become "non-users."