Take public transportation to work downtown? Need a car to go the doctor, business meetings or take clients to lunch occassionally?

If you live in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago or Washington, D.C., you may want to check out Flexcar.com

Flexcar is a carsharing service, where you can rent a car by the hour — (the rate varies depending on what area you're in.) If you need the car more than occassonally and live in a place with good public transportation, you can pay a monthly fee where you get a set number of hours, plus a discount on additional hours.

The hourly rate includes everything: gas, insurance, maintenance, emergency towing, etc.

For someone who can take full advantage of this service, it can save you a lot of money, gas and headaches. Flexcar's website has a tool for calculating the difference in cost between owning and renting a car through their service.

Using the tool at flexcar and tweaking for my actual costs and usage, here's how much I figure it costs to me to own and operate a car:

Cost of Owning Assumptions:

• Miles do you drive per month? 1,200
• Estimate price per gallon: $3.19 (and rising)
• Estimate average miles per gallon: 25
• Estimate your monthly parking costs: $75.00

Average Monthly Operating Costs: $301.50

• Cost of gas per mile: $0.13
• Cost of Gas per month: $156.00
• Average maintence & repair costs per mile: $0.059**
• Maintenance & repair costs per month: $70.80
• Monthly Parking Costs: $75.00

**as calculated in AAA's "Your driving costs, 2005."

Average Monthly Ownership Costs: $159.42

• Car Insurance (based on my actual costs): $44.00
• License, registration & taxes: $32.42
• Depreciation (based on my actual costs): $83.00

Total monthly cost of car ownership:$460.92

Now, let's look at how it much it would cost me, using Flex Car instead:

** based on $8.00 an hour

Living as I do in Southern California, living without a car is not a luxury I have. I live 30 miles from where I work. However, my actually costs are much lower because I take public transit 3 to 4 times a week. Even then, my total cost for owning my car, $250.00. Add in the pre-tax cost of my monthly rail/transit pass ($132.00), and total rises to $ 382.00.

Would I pay $217.00 a month to get rid of my car and use flexcar and take public transportation? You bet! Especially considering the $80.00 monthly fee is almost equal to the amount of money my car loses in value just sitting in my garage.

I only wish they had this service in San Francisco when I was living there in the 1990's…

Flexcar does have an application fee — but because my employer is partner with the program, I didn't have to pay it. I've already set up my first reservation and will take it out for a spin next week.