Spinning Wheels

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Spinning Wheels
Owner Bechir Blagui at his Hollywood Rent a Car

Car rental entrepreneur Bechir Blagui has a dream: He wants to set up an electric car-sharing business in Hollywood.

Environmentally conscious tourists and local residents would sign up online to rent electric cars by the hour, pick up a vehicle on Hollywood Boulevard, do some sightseeing or errands, and then drop off the car at another point along the boulevard. There, the vehicles would be recharged and ready for the next customer.

Blagui, a 29-year-old Tunisian immigrant and veteran of the car rental industry who opened up Hollywood Rent-A-Car last year, has support from local merchants and neighborhood groups. They see his idea as a way to bring more tourist dollars into the East Hollywood area while reducing emissions.

But Blagui has been stymied at Los Angeles City Hall. He needs permission and help from the city, especially in setting up the streetside charging stations for the electric cars. After nine months of pitching his plan to multiple departments, he’s gotten only vague promises and instructions to try his luck with other agencies.

“It’s all a game with them,” Blagui said. “I’ve spent several thousand dollars on this and made dozens of trips to City Hall. And it seems like I’m no further along than when I started.”

City officials said that while Blagui’s plan may sound good on paper, there are some real concerns. They said state law may prevent the installation of electric vehicle chargers at streetside parking spaces. They also question whether the city should pay for the charging stations, which cost about $4,000 each, not including the expense of bringing wires to the chargers. Plus, they aren’t sure whether a car-sharing service would work in Hollywood.

“Look, he has a very nice objective,” said City Councilman Tom LaBonge, who represents part of the East Hollywood area where Blagui wants to operate. “But he wants to use the public right of way and it’s expensive to install all the infrastructure.”

Blagui is also a victim of bad timing. The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power is currently studying how best to add to its existing network of 400 electric vehicle charging stations throughout the city, though it’s not clear whether the department can pay the bill in the midst of L.A.’s budget crisis.

The city is also in the midst of a pilot program in which Cambridge, Mass.-based Zipcar Inc. is running car-share operations at the UCLA and USC campuses. Later this year, city officials will evaluate the pilot program and determine whether and where to expand car-sharing programs. One issue that has already come up is the dedication of scarce street parking spaces specifically for electric car-share vehicles.

Blagui said he fears the city will decide to award Zipcar – the nation’s largest car-sharing operator – an exclusive contract in Los Angeles, shutting him out. Zipcar has begun to integrate electric vehicles in its car-sharing fleet, announcing in summer 2009 that it would use the Citroen c1 electric vehicle and a plug-in version of the Toyota Prius.

“If you’re not Zipcar, they ignore you,” Blagui said. “I’m just not big enough to get their attention.”

Blagui has gathered support from local neighborhood and business groups, including the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and the Little Armenia chapter of the Armenian American Chamber of Commerce.

Chamber chapter President Sam Kbushyan said an electric car-sharing program would draw more tourists toward the east end of Hollywood.

“Right now, the tourists mainly go to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the Hollywood Wax Museum, Hollywood & Highland and then they leave,” Kbushyan said. “But if we had a car-sharing program, then they could hop in a car, come down the boulevard and explore the rest of Hollywood.”

He added that local residents also could use the electric cars to patronize businesses in East Hollywood.

Also on board is local transportation activist and blogger Stephen Box, who said the city is missing a golden opportunity to be a leader in setting up electric car infrastructure.

“Somehow, L.A.’s high-altitude approach to becoming the ‘Greenest Big City’ has failed to reach street level,” Box said in a recent blog posting on Blagui’s proposal. “One would think that instead of waiting for pie-in-the-sky solutions that will take decades to arrive, Los Angeles would embrace the small steps of individuals.”

Also supporting Blagui’s effort is an Arcadia manufacturer of electric chargers, Clean Fuel Connection Inc. Company President Enid Joffe said that besides gaining a new customer, she wants to see the city of Los Angeles develop a clear, consistent policy on electric vehicles and charging stations.

“Electric cars are coming and we’re going to have to tackle all these issues sooner or later,” she said. “It would be better for the city and its residents to tackle this sooner.”

Blagui said that for a sharing program for electric cars to work, there must be charging stations along streets.

“If you have the charging stations off in some remote lot somewhere, it won’t be the same and you won’t get the kind of traffic you want,” he said. He said that he doesn’t want to own or operate the charging stations, just have them available for his car-sharing customers to use.

But Amir Sedadi, assistant general manager with the city Department of Transportation said a state law may prevent granting street parking spaces for such restricted use. The department has asked City Attorney Carmen Trutanich to examine the issue.

Blagui countered that there already are electric charging stations with dedicated street parking spaces in Santa Monica, San Francisco and San Jose.

In Santa Monica, one charging unit supplies plug receptacles in two parking spaces on Montana Avenue near 11th Street. The charging unit and receptacles were installed in the late 1990s with grant money from the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Santa Monica Energy Administrator Susan Munves said the city attorney examined the state law and determined that a charging station could be placed on the street.

The Santa Monica charging station was intended to accommodate drivers of General Motors’ ill-fated EV-1 vehicles, which were recalled and disposed of a decade ago. Now the charging station is rarely used and nonelectric vehicles often park in the spaces.

But in East Hollywood, there’s another issue. LaBonge said plans are in the works for major redevelopment projects around Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue, where Hollywood Rent-A-Car is located and where Blagui wants at least one charging station.

“I don’t want to install something now that may have to be moved in a few years for redevelopment,” LaBonge said.

Nonetheless, the councilman said he has assigned one of his deputies to assist Blagui in navigating the city bureaucracy.

Ultimately, though, Blagui may have to adjust his vision if he wants to get an electric car-sharing program running in Hollywood.

“Electric car-sharing programs are spreading, but the ones that exist tend to use parking lots for their operations,” said John Boesel, chief executive of Calstart, a Pasadena non-profit dedicated to promoting the growth of electric vehicles and other clean technologies for transportation. “We’re focusing on getting charging stations in convenient public places, like grocery store lots, and making sure there’s adequate street signage directing people to the charging stations.”

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Howard Fine
Howard Fine is a 23-year veteran of the Los Angeles Business Journal. He covers stories pertaining to healthcare, biomedicine, energy, engineering, construction, and infrastructure. He has won several awards, including Best Body of Work for a single reporter from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers and Distinguished Journalist of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists.

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