This one is complements of Mr. Greenspan (my co-worker, not the Chairman of the Fed). I had never heard of this till today, but check out Flexcar. Its a service where you pay a one time $25 fee and you're a member for life. Then, anytime you need a car, you call them up, make a reservation and go pick one up. You get charged $10/hour that you have the car and are allowed to drive 10 miles in that hour (you get charged 35 cents for each mile you go over). Seems kinda steep maybe, but you don't have to pay for gas or insurance on the car, they cover that. They have a couple different places around LA where you can pick up or drop off a car (and I'm guessing you get billed monthly or something). They have a pickup/dropoff point down at Union Station downtown, so I could take the train there very easily, then pick up a car and go wherever. They also have a station at Parsons in Pasadena, so that would be convenient for going out to my Dad's or to Dave's. Ok, but here's the problem: essentially I'm looking at $20 roundtrip to my Dad's or to Dave's. True, I don't go out there more than say 3 or 4 times a month, but if I do 4 of those trips a month then that's $80. Now that is cheaper than what I pay now ($230 a month in car payments and about $125 in insurance, although the car payments stop in another 3 months), but I do have the benefit of having a car here if I need it to go out for anything else. This would definitely discourage me from making any unnecessary trips in a car, but it would also make my life fairly complicated if I ever needed to go out towards the valley, for instance, or down to the beach (they have a station in Long Beach, but I'm talking about out by Santa Monica or by where Jon lives. Plus, once the MetroRail extension to Pasadena goes in this July, I wouldn't be needing to take a car out there. I dunno, its another possibility to consider, I suppose. Sounds like a good idea though, they just need more pickup/dropoff stations.